


Snow Queen

by saunatonttu



Series: Winter Sports AUs [1]
Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Alternate Universe - Biathlon, F/M, Human AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-26
Updated: 2017-05-26
Packaged: 2018-11-05 07:45:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 21,042
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11009034
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/saunatonttu/pseuds/saunatonttu
Summary: Biathlon season is long and arduous even without any drama, but she doesn't have any luck avoiding it this time. Natallia could have chosen a better sport to sacrifice her youth in, but this had always been inevitable.





	Snow Queen

**Author's Note:**

> For HetaliaBB! I will link to the art later.

Östersund, Sweden’s _Vinterstaden_ —Winter City. The idyllic scenery, usually charming, flew by in a vision of white, but Belarusian biathlete Natallia Arlovskaya had no use for sightseeing in the Biathlon World Cup.

The snow was kinder to her today than it had been in her recent training in the south of Oslo, and kinder still than in practice back in Belarus. It was certainly more forgiving than in her first competition just two days ago.

Or, more accurately: her skis were better waxed for the weather, and her endurance training had gone well, but there was no time to consider any of this during the race; there was nothing but the pounding of her heart and the burning in her legs as she pushed herself forward across the snowy slopes of the trail.

 

The cold weather contrasted the sweat gathering on her cheeks and especially her underarms, but it wasn’t a problem as long so she was moving, her gun a constant weight pressing down against her back. This was her freedom. This was her mind, still and empty of messy, anxious thoughts.

Just as it had been in her very early youth, it was just Natallia and the cold.

She was twenty-three seconds ahead, which was a good lead, considering there was only a kilometer left to ski. No one in her race could overtake a lead like that.

Natallia’s lips stretched into a rare, ferocious smile as she positioned herself for the next downward slope.

 

 

There were dozens of Norwegian flags flying at Östersund’s finish line, dotted with several Swedish, Finnish and German flags as well. There may have been, perhaps, a single Belarusian red-green waving bravely among the dark blues, yellows, and whites. Overall, it was a pretty sight, capable of overwhelming Natallia the first time she had competed on this level just two years ago.

She spread her arms wide as she crossed, a victorious gesture for the fans clamoring for the first look at first place.

It was only the second competition of the season, and it was her win. She’d beat second place by a thirty-second margin, she noted with a bland sort of satisfaction settling in her bones as she finished catching her breath. More competitors skied over the finish line, some of them competing with each other for the positions to follow.

She made her way to her coaches and the rest of her staff with skis in hand. Her older sister was among those waiting for her, having insisted on following her two little siblings to Sweden for their respective competitions. Yekaterina, who had never taken part in any competitive sports and whose experience with winter sports was limited to fooling around with her sister and brother in childhood, was smiling, teary-eyed and proud even though the season had just begun.

Natallia only just managed to hand her skis over to the equipment management staff just before she was enveloped into a crushing embrace. Yekaterina’s hugs were always on the wrong side of uncomfortable, mainly because of Yekaterina’s massive chest and her general clinginess. Natallia tapped gingerly at her sister’s back in return, wheezing through her nose before muttering a complaint, which Yekaterina blithely ignored.

Their brother, Ivan, wasn’t there. Natallia knew this without looking; her older brother would be busy with his coworker. It was rare that the two would come to the actual location of the competition, working as commentators instead of as sideline reporters. Despite this, Ivan would always make time for a quick visit for Natallia’s sake.

It was very sweet, and Natallia’s complex feelings towards her blood family settled somewhat when Ivan put in the effort to help.

“ _Sestra_ ,” Natallia grumbled in Yekaterina’s stranglehold. Her arms hung at her sides like dead weight, and her body was starting to recognize the chill in the air. “Let go. The reporters—“

Her throat caught when the cameras began to flash. Natallia twitched at the idea of being caught affectionate on camera. It would have been different had it been Ivan, but… that was another matter altogether, more dirty laundry that was best left unaired, metaphorically or on live television.

By the time Natallia had managed to pry her sister off, all the remaining competitors had slipped across the finish line.

She turned to give careful interviews to the sports reporters. She hadn’t spoken to many journalists the past season, save for the few sports reporters from her own country. Now even the foreigners showed a great interest in her, shoving microphones in her face to answer rapid questions she couldn’t process as fast as they wanted her to.

“The sprint was all right, like I said afterwards,” she repeated over and over, either in English or in Russian depending on the reporter. She always seemed to speak more awkwardly when there was a camera trained on her and a microphone in her face. “Today went even better because of the shooting. We have put a great deal of effort into it during the training season. The skiing is still at an alright level, like last season.”

A gust of wind caused Natallia to shiver slightly, and she draped her jacket over herself. The one downside to escaping her sister’s clutches was that she felt significantly colder than she had in Yekaterina’s bear-like embrace.

Natallia curled her lips in distaste when the reporters crowded in on her. T _hankfully_ , there was a distraction in the form of the surprise second-place winner, a Hungarian by the name of Erzsébet Hederverary or something. Except that Erzsébet was a Russian name and Herderverary wasn’t a name at all. Natallia squinted. Erzsébet Héderváry. That was it.

The woman didn’t need to give her a hug or otherwise cause a scandal to attract the attention of the reporters—all she needed to do was arrive on the scene and throw on a jacket before wiping the drool off her chin with the handkerchief she was given.

Like rabid dogs with fresh meat, the reporters immediately moved their microphones to Erzsébet.

Natallia couldn’t make her escape before the flowering ceremony, but she decided she could go grab a hot chocolate before it. The cheering from the audience was unbearable when she wasn’t skiing on the trail, and she was eager for a change of pace, if only for a small while.

“You don’t actually have _that_ much time, Natalka.”

The cheerful voice made Natallia halt in her steps, and she wondered how in the world _he_ had managed to get into the personnel and athlete only area.

Then again, Feliks would always deflect any inquiries on the matter with a hand flap and a dismissive comment about having his ways.

He strutted to her side, bundled inside a thick autumn jacket, with a mug in each hand. His mouth twisted as he raised one of them. “Here we go. A scathing hot drink for a scathing hot woman.”

Natallia raised an eyebrow at him, her voice flat but her mouth in a tiny curl. “I don’t hear the insult.”

“There wasn’t one _._ ”

She snickered at Feliks’ tone and accepted her mug with both hands. Feliks peered at her with through the steam, and she had to marvel inwardly at how he managed to look so put together in the cold winter air. Even in a traditional woolen cap and giant, fluffy mittens, he looked like the “hot” next to her “mess”.

 

The heat of the beverage  burned at her hands, but it was a welcome sensation that served to stave off the cold.

Feliks gently prodded, “You drink like an old woman.”

He was reminding her in his special Feliks way that the flowering ceremony would begin soon. Natallia was tempted to drink slower to spite him, but there was no time for their petty back-and-forth for the moment. She took several quicker sips.

She could already hear her coach calling for her, voice thin with age and permanent irritation, and Feliks made an amused face as Natallia shoved her mug back at him.

“Stay,” she told him.

“Yes, yes,” Feliks flapped his hand at her before grabbing her hot chocolate, “Always your loyal dog, ready to wait again.”

“Shouldn’t it be ‘serve’?” She was not too proud to admit that her English was a tad shaky at times, but at least she was in good company. Her lips twisted at the corners, although her face remained severe. “I _will_ take you up on that at some point.”

Feliks grinned, “Just go, silly. Your coach is about to burst a vein. And why’s he not wearing the scarf I bought him?”

What had started as a farewell devolved into the usual rant about Natallia’s ungrateful coach, which Natallia took as her cue to get going before the competition organizers threw a fit over the winner not coming to get her flowers and trophy.

Zipping up her jacket completely, she went into the crowd of people again, making her way to the podium on the side.

The sky darkened steadily, a symptom of the impending winter. Natallia inhaled. Her lungs protested the cold air, but she herself relished the taste of it. This was where she belonged; she had heard it so often she had begun to believe it herself. She, the ice queen, the unsmiling woman—or so the media would have her fans believe.

Feliks was among the few who had the grace not to comment on her frozen expressions. He was truly a good friend, and not even she could understand how she had come by him.

Natallia trudged towards the crowd, unready to censor her words and attempt plastic smiles.

 

Even after the ceremony ended, Natallia’s ears continued to ring with the cheers and applause from the remaining fans. Her muscles had passed sore and were quickly headed towards intolerable. It was all still _new_ to her, and her heart thrummed unsteadily beneath her ribs even as she gave brief comments to the maintenance team. The only thing left of her smile was only a thin line.

The line morphed into a grimace when a familiar fragrance wafted over to her right before a hand clamped down on her shoulder, accompanied with an unnecessarily stereotypical French laugh.

“That was absolutely breathtaking, _ma cherie_ ,” Francis breathed into her ear. He backed off a moment later when Natallia flinched at his closeness, but it did not keep him quiet.

Natallia blinked at the subsequent camera flashes, and Francis continued.

“It is too bad there will not yet be a mixed relay. I was looking forward to competing against you and your teammates, .”

“Hey, that’s Francis Bonnefoy with the women’s biathlon winner! Everyone, _cameras out_!”

Natallia heard the reporters clustered just outside of the crowd she was currently suffocating in. Francis laughed irritatingly again, and Natallia contemplated the idea of murder by skiing pole, maybe shoving the stems of the flowers he loved so much down his throat.

While she daydreamed about ending him, Francis guided her to his side in a friendly pose for the cameras. Natallia steeled her self for several more minutes of posturing for into the camera flashes.

“Why must you do this every time,” Natallia muttered through her teeth.

“This is only the second time,” Francis said dismissively without moving his bright smile, “Besides, I adore seeing _him_ get more animated when I do this.”

“Him?”

Francis’s lips curled. “You know how I feel about Team Norway.”

Oh.

“I don’t see you being an ass to his other teammates, though,” Natallia said quietly as the camera flashes died out, “Is this revenge against the entire country of Norway, or against a single athlete, hm?”

“That’s the million dollar question.”

A voice dull enough to rival Natallia’s spoke up, although she was able to pick up the amusement underneath. Her eyes brightened against any conscious decision she may have made, lips widening in a genuine smile.

Another round of camera flashes assaulted them, but

Natallia paid them no attention.

She hadn’t seen Lukas out of his biathlon suit in a couple days and now that she did, the difference made her blink a few times. Without the Norwegian red on him, he almost didn’t look like himself. The earthy brown jacket he wore threatened to swallow him whole.

“Congratulations,” Lukas offered, bumping his shoulder against hers and taking her hand in his own. Natallia entwined their fingers; _this_ was a first. “You were spectacular, Natallia.”

“Ah, young love. Breathtaking,” Francis commented unnecessarily.

Ignoring the Frenchman, Lukas continued, “Would you like to have dinner with me? Unless your team is in a hurry to leave Sweden.”

Lukas looked at her with a look of practiced boredom, but his eyes belied his unsmiling face in a way that made Natallia giddy.

Francis huffed. If Natallia had been looking, she would have probably seen him cross his arms in a playful show of childishness.

“Not until tomorrow morning,” Natallia said. Then, raising her eyebrows, she added, “You know a good place around here?”

“Better than any he knows, at least,” Lukas nodded towards Francis, who had already moved away to catch Erzsébet.

“Cocky,” Natallia snorted. She let go of his hand to link their arms instead. “Don’t let me down then, Lukas.”

He answered dryly, fondly. “You expect many great things from me; it must have rubbed off on you at some point.”

Lukas’s self-confidence had nothing to do with Natallia and everything to do with competitive sports and belonging to a well-funded, well-appreciated team, but she would let him get away with it, just this once.

 

It took another hour for Natallia to be free of her obligations and out of her ski suit, and by then the exhaustion was nothing but steady aches wracking every muscle. Lukas looked just as tired from his own competition, but Natallia had learned that it might just as well be the general Nordic look. _All_ of the Nordics she knew wore the same face of exhaustion throughout the week as though it were normal.

The restaurant, if it could be called that, had a decent menu  which focused mainly on various desserts that an athlete like Natallia should be avoiding at any cost. It was proving extremely difficult to turn down a chocolate trifle when she hadn’t had any in the past few weeks in preparation for the season.

Natallia glared at Lukas, who inspected the menu with a slight smile visible over his mouth. His skin was pale, paler under the restaurant lights in a way that reminded her of untouched snow and gave her a pang of some strange homesickness. It was beautiful.

“Indulging yourself once in a while isn’t so bad,” Lukas broke the silence, “At least, if you take Matthias’ word for it.”

“The same guy who picked a fight with your British alpine skier neighbour in Oslo?”

“That’s the one,” Lukas smirked dryly, “I probably shouldn’t listen to a word out of his mouth, but he gets some sort of privilege with his childhood friend status.”

Natallia tapped her fingers against her coffee—black, no sugar. “I remember hearing something about bungee jumping last summer? I still can’t believe you didn’t invite me.”

“His idiocy is an illness,” Lukas huffed, “that no one should be exposed to.”

“I seem to recall that I’m better at telling him to fuck off than you are.”

It was true; she made quite a sight in September when she’d stayed over at Lukas’, standing in her lingerie and telling Matthias off when the man had tried to rummage through the fridge.

She was certainly not an expressive person, and in fact could scarcely be called content, but there were times when even she had to give into the moment and laugh, as she had done when she managed to convince the Dane that she was fervently involved with the local witchcraft association.

“This is true,” Lukas admitted. 

They shared a look, eyes warm in a way that few other people would understand.

The serene moment was shattered when a familiar voice interjected, “ _You_ are _so_ rude, Natalka. I can’t believe you left me _all alone_ there!”

Natallia barely managed to lift her gaze to the voice, and already Feliks had sat himself down beside her, huffing and pouting with narrowed eyes. It was about as threatening as a kitten wobbling across the floor, and marginally less cute.

Feliks attracted enough attention with his outwear and flashy looks as it was, but his loud voice made it all the worse and invited questioning glances from the people around the considerably casual restaurant. Natallia grimaced at the attention, elbowing at Feliks. “Must you do this?”

“You _abandoned_ me, Natalka,” Feliks declared, gesturing wildly at her, “I can’t _believe_ you.”

Natallia inspected the look on his face, considered it, and then shot back, “Believe it.”

Lukas watched them both, his confusion deepening as they both snickered like they had had a hilarious exchange of wit.

“You haven’t ordered yet, have you? Good,” Feliks leaned closer to the one in front of Natallia. “Ooh, do they have _pierogi_?”

“They do, actually,” Lukas said, giving Natallia a resigned look, “Page three.”

“Nice!” Feliks murmured.

“It’s sort of why I took her here,” Lukas said wryly, as he gestured one of the waiters to come by. “I’m treating her, so I hope you brought your own wallet, Łukasiewicz.”

Feliks’s eyes widened with deep hurt.

“I have a little brother,” Lukas said, “and that has never worked on me.”

 “I am a little sister, and I can tell that he’s lying. You just need to up your game, Feliks,” Natallia snickered.

“You little shit. Don’t encourage him.” The words held a considerable amount of fondness even when Lukas’s face didn’t, and Natallia gave him a coy look as her fingers played with the tangled ends of her hair, free from the firm ponytail she pulled it into during competitions.

The staring contest was broken up by Feliks’ snickering fit, and Natallia let out a snort of amusement despite herself.

With such a long season ahead, soft moments like these were refreshing. It might change, but for now it was enough for her to soak in the warmth of casual dinners and Lukas’ callused hand on her hip on their way to their hotel.

If the biathlon took everything she had, it had returned it to her tenfold.

That was good. She might repeat that to an interviewer, someday.

 

Much to Francis Bonnefoy’s confusion, the mixed relay took place on Sunday, a few hours after the locals were done with their weekly sermon at the church.

Team Belarus wasn’t expected to do all that well with their unbalanced team, although some people looked at her and saw the yesterday’s winner.

Standing at the starting line as the starter for her team brought some satisfaction, although not being the one responsible for the last laps and shootings should have been disappointing. It wasn’t. She didn’t really like competing against Erzsébet Héderváry in the first place—the Hungarian was just peppy enough to get under Natallia’s skin.

Natallia was a sore loser, always had been.

In the meantime, she decided to focus on beating the starting Finn in skiing; Marja Lumi was the other world-top skier in the first group. She couldn’t turn her eyes to stare at her as she was a row ahead from the Finn, but she could feel the Finn’s gaze on her neck, the stare of cool brown eyes.

Natallia’s lips pressed firmly together, and she tightened the grip on her poles as the countdown to the start of the competition began.

 

 

“And so the season’s first mixed relay begins!”

Alfred’s overly enthusiastic voice grated at Ivan’s ears, and he wondered, not for the first time, if anyone actively _enjoyed_ Alfred’s commentary.

“Germany and France are obvious favorites, both including athletes from last year’s top ten. What’s your opinion on this, Ivan?”

“Well, statistics aside,” Ivan said, “I wouldn’t cast the Russians out just yet.”

“Ah, the patriotic bias,” Alfred said in a great show of hypocrisy. It was both annoying and endearing, and Ivan didn’t know what to do about that—a novel situation for him. “But you’re right—Solkova and the others did have their moments last season, especially at the world champs…”

“And then there’s Team Belarus,” Ivan interjected before Alfred could start his rant on the previous world championships. Not on TV, Alfred, not on TV. “They haven’t had as much success on the men’s side, but Natallia Arlovskaya started the season well and placed twice on podium already.”

“The mass start did not go so well,” Alfred lamented, “But she’s—hey, wait a minute. Isn’t she your sister, Ivan?”

“Because every Slavic person must be related to each other?” Ivan questioned with a chuckle. Just as Alfred was about to retort, Ivan said, “But, you are right, she is my little sister.”

“I _knew_ she looked familiar! She was at your family gathering last summer, wasn’t she—“

“Alfred,” Ivan said, firmly but softly, “not at work.”

Alfred smiled sheepishly, scratching at the back of his head. “Oh. Oh, right, Anyway, back to the event…”

 

 

Sweat, mild nausea, and saliva dripping down the chin—this was the usual aftermath of a biathlon competition, but luckily, Natallia didn’t have any of that. Instead she held her younger teammate in a stiff embrace and tried to pretend he was oblivious to her breasts.

The reporters were much less interested in Team Belarus and their unexpected success—third place, beating France by ten seconds, despite the fact that the French fourth had been _Francis_ —than they were in Natallia and her activities last night.

“What does that have to do with the biathlon?” she replied to the question about last night’s dinner. “Contrary to popular belief, athletes do eat. Sometimes. With friends or boyfriends, or even _both_.” Her sarcasm must have gotten lost in the wind.

“Yes, but with two men? That’s—scandalous,” someone shouted.

 _The only thing scandalous is his hairdo,_ Feliks would later huff at her, and she would laugh, but at the moment it was entirely not funny. Natallia grimaced.

Andrei, the young teammate that had led Belarus to third place after clean shooting and decent skiing, decided to step in for Natallia. “After all she’s accomplished, I think she’s entitled to date however many men she wants.”

“Thanks, Andrei,” Natallia said dryly, trying not to think about the fact that he probably wanted to be one of them.

He grinned, “Any time.”

He wasn’t much younger than her, in all honesty, but he was still so painfully fresh out of adolescence that Natallia found him difficult to deal with; his rather obvious crush on her was just a couple misplaced hands short of cute.

Francis sent her a look of shared misery. At least someone other than she and Lukas was suffering, although on Francis’ part, it had more to do with his own supposed single life rather than Natallia’s love life.

Lukas, on the other hand, was nowhere to be seen. Team Norway always did seem to slip away when the media came hunting for juicy tidbits, although Natallia couldn’t fault them for that this time. She wished she could slip away herself.

 

 

 

Her social media had become a mess by the time the sun rose late on the Monday morning. She rarely checked it, being busy with training and running through the competition strategies as well as practicing shooting, but that morning she had found the time between being ushered into a rented bus for the team and the maintenance folks.

What she found on her phone’s screen made her raise her eyebrows, the most emotive part of her face – according to Yekaterina, anyway.

 _A threeway between upcoming_ _athletes?_ proclaimed a tweet with a grainy picture of Natallia with Lukas and Feliks at the restaurant. Some of the comments were amusing, but most of the comments under the tweet only served to irritate her.

She told herself that the people following the love lives of athletes had no lives of their own; that had been her stance on the matter growing up, anyway, as she watched Ivan’s career progress.

There was also the small fact that no one with any sense in their heads would mistake Feliks for a skier—or any sort of athlete for that matter, even though he did play volleyball as a hobby.

Natallia let out a short laugh that might have been mistaken for a wheeze before she stuffed the phone back into her jacket pocket and returned to helping to load the skis into the bus while avoiding unnecessary small talk. Usually her stern face was enough to deter people, no matter how Slavic they were— or perhaps because of it—but today she had no such luck.

“So.”

She ignored it. The speaker was one of those responsible for the skis of Team Belarus. His name was… Ravis? Ravenous?

He seemed to lose his courage when she gave him no response. She (carefully) slammed a few more skis into the vehicle.

Another one tried.

“Um, Miss Arlovskaya—”

This one was the Lithuanian one, whose name Natallia couldn’t remember. She’d often heard him talking about his home in a wistful tone.

“What is it?” she finally answered. At this point, she would prefer to get it over with as soon as possible.

“Are you dating two guys at the same time?” the Lithuanian blurted, immediately paling and looking like he wanted to throw up.

Natallia paused in her work. “What the hell?”

“I, uh, just that the magazine had something—“

Natallia leveled him with a narrow-eyed glare, and his smile twitched in fear. “The Twitter post?”

She should have known that lies and evil spread fast on social media—and that people would inevitably fall for delicious presumptions and incorrect deductions.

And yet, here she was, standing in the middle of a trio of ski staff, being asked if she fucked Lukas _and_ Feliks, with nothing to say.

 

It wouldn’t have been so annoying, perhaps, if the media wasn’t so dead set on making a big deal out of it. In most cases they even forgot to mention her career as a serious athlete and just presented her as the woman dating two “athletes”. Someone B-classed, not famous enough for people to remember her victories and celebrate them, but not quite enough unknown for people not to give a shit about either.

Lukas was lucky in the sense that he was overshadowed by the greatness of Team Norway and its more famous biathletes. The shadow of Björn Einar Björndalen was tall and all-encompassing, and Lukas’ reputation emerged relatively unscathed by this debacle.

The travel to the airport was not short enough for Natallia’s thoughts to stay away from the online news articles that had emerged but not long enough for her to succumb to the sweet embrace of unconsciousness and sleep. Lukas hadn’t texted her yet, which wasn’t a surprise; he was on the way to the airport as well and possibly busy with his ski maintenance team _and_ his teammates, who were a colorful bunch. Matthias could be there, but Natallia wasn’t sure.

Francis Bonnefoy, on the other hand, didn’t seem to be busy with anything, which was a surprise considering… Francis Bonnefoy.

 _At least you’re doing it right in front of his face?_ was the first message, complete with a winking emoji that had Natallia inhale through nostrils and count to ten in her head. _Honesty is the_ _key_ _to a_ _healthy_ _relationship,_ _ma chère_ _._

Natallia had figured out a long time ago that the reason Francis littered his English with French endearments and small words was because he was a dick, but it hadn’t stopped making her roll her eyes yet. It might have been different if it were Russian (Ivan used to do that in his English before getting his current job), but as it was, Natallia tended to feel irritated.

Perhaps that was the point, asides from flipping the English language off.

Natallia, bored as she was with her head pressed up against the window on her side, typed up a reply, which lacked emojis and emotion in general. _Stop paying attention to useless gossip, you cretin._ _Besides, you were there when those reporters hounded me f_ _or it._

Feliks’s advice on the matter was uselessly peppy, so Natallia had already forgotten what he had suggested. She _should_ talk about it with Lukas, but he kept his phone off when he was traveling, especially whenever Matthias tagged along – as he was doing for the competitions before the Western Christmas.

Natallia had almost dozed off when the phone in her hand buzzed with a new text message, nearly falling off before she tightened her grip again, blinking herself awake.

 _Well, they were hounding me f_ _or my lack of girlfriend, so… mind sharing a recap?_ _;)_

Natallia rolled her eyes. It could be worse, she figured. It could be Gilbert making all those awful sports puns, specifically ski jumping puns that made no sense to anyone but himself and thus failed to do nothing but create confusion.

At least his competitions were never at the same place as Natallia’s at the same time…

Natallia began to type a short summary of the previous interviews, adding in a few snarky remarks about Andrei. The poor boy had done nothing, as far as he knew, but that didn’t really matter as Natallia vented her annoyance to the infamous consultant of love in biathlon circles.

 

 

Slovenia and early December had brought surprisingly good amount of natural snow into Natallia’s life, which she hadn’t expected despite being half-Russian. As they said back home: anyone with Russian blood in them had their lives 70% in snow at any given time.

Did it make sense? No, but Natallia supposed it didn’t to anyone who wasn’t a 50’s child.

If Sweden had barely had snow just a few days ago, then Slovenia more than made up for it with the several centimeters tall snow piles on the skiing routes. The temperature had fallen below zero some time before, the local competition organizers mentioned to Natallia’s head coach, and the weather was predicted to remain pleasantly chilly throughout the week.

Wind, however, was a factor no one could say anything besides “well, it’s been a little unpredictable lately…”, which pulled Igor Fyodorovski’s thick, droopy lips into a thin smile as he eyed at her and the rest of the team.

When their coach smiled, a puppy died – a proverb birthed by the Belarusian biathlon team.

Another common saying among them: when Igor and Natallia both smiled, everyone should expect nothing less than a nuclear strike.

The joyful Slavic jokes –  not known by many, but definitely depressingly funny.

 

Tuesday night, after checking up on skis and other equipment to make sure everything was still safe and sound, Natallia finally got some time to hang out in Lukas’s hotel room. He looked a lot worse for wear with his sleep-disarrayed hair and dark rings under blue eyes that looked violet under certain light, and he wasn’t up for small talk or much of anything.

Which was fine; she sometimes appreciated the silence over his words. And after Andrei, well, she needed the silence.

Not having Feliks around this time made her a bit antsy as well, but like most things, she drowned that emotion out with sheer willpower.

“Your roommate?” she asked as she sat on the floor, her eyes on the television screen where a soap opera was unfolding in the silliest, most dramatic ways. Lukas was reading on an armchair, his dainty legs pulled up on it with the rest of him.

“Out drinking,” Lukas said.

“And here I thought Norwegians survived by fish and milk alone.”

Lukas shifted audibly on the armchair. “Not enough cod here, Natalka.”

The Slavic diminutive was strange coming from the mouth of her boyfriend. Natallia paused and turned to him.

It wasn’t like him, but he looked embarrassed and faintly distressed. Natallia inspected him quietly, furrowing her eyebrows as she deliberated between questioning his sudden interest in Slavic languages and just shrugging it off and climbing into his lap to get more affection where that came from.

Lukas eyed her wryly. “I _am_ capable of using nicknames, despite how little sense they make sense to me.”

“Matthias told me you gave your little brother nicknames all the time.”

“That’s different, he was… _is_ being obstinate and deserves them.”

Natallia was not jealous of a bizarre boy who had run off to Iceland when he was seventeen. She was not. Her toes curled uncomfortably inside her socks, digging into the fabric and the carpet, as she fought off a grimace.

“It,” Lukas continued, clearing his throat, “just seems like a thing just for you and Łukasiewicz, you know?”

Natallia blinked, “that’s just a language—a cultural thing. I’m not sure if you use diminutives in Norway, but it’s like…Polish for Natasha.” Realizing something, she smirked slowly, “You’re not jealous, are you?”

Lukas gave her a strange look. “If it makes you feel any better, if I had to choose between you and Feliks, I wouldsleep with you.”

“Hm.” Lukas’s face turned calculative, and he turned his gaze to the clock on the nearby wall. “How important do you consider tomorrow’s introduction to the route?”

“Not very.”

Natallia smiled to herself; he was awful at setting the mood, but it was one of those things she had learned to not care about. Asides from his dedication to the sport and to his family, his single-minded awkwardness reminded her of Ivan in some ways.

(Brother complex? Francis had thrown that idea in at some point, but that had only earned him an icy stare and an iced latte to his face.)

“Neither do I,” Lukas said, and finally sounded like whatever he’d been choking on recently had dissipated. The thought of his roommates returning possibly soon had apparently yet to register in his head, and Natallia wasn’t going to bring that up.

It was rare enough for Lukas to even hint at his anxieties, much less getting frisky in a semi-public place.

 

 

In the end, his roommates did end up walking in on them. At least newspapers wouldn’t be writing about _that_ , Natallia figured as she left the room with her blouse in her arms and pants just barely zipped up.

 

 

Staring at Erzsébet  Héderváry’s back was _not_ Natallia’s preferred hobby, but it was difficult to seethe when her calves burnt from exhaustion and the kilometers of skiing with a little too fast pace. It was even more infuriating knowing that she had lost Thursday’s competition to Erzsébet by just three seconds despite shooting all the designated targets down.

Erzsébet, as far as Natallia knew, had shot all but three. _Three_ , and she had _still_ caught up with Natallia by the third time shooting.

The Slovenian audience, littered over the route, cheered; for whom, Natallia couldn’t tell.

The snow crunched beneath the skis as Natallia climbed up a hill, her lungs aching from the effort to breathe, while Erzsébet looked like she was flying, her legs rising and sliding with ease that shouldn’t have been natural.

Pojkulka’s route wasn’t the toughest Natallia had seen, but the sprint back on Thursday had left a deep exhaustion that she hadn’t recovered from completely – but that was no excuse Natallia could accept from her body and herself, and so she pushed herself forward with the sticks, sliding into the downslope once she had made it to the top of the hill.

Eight hundred meters more.

 

Eight hundred meters later, and Natallia’s face had landed ungracefully on the snow immediately after crossing the finish line, two seconds behind Erzsébet if the screens were right. The cold against her face helped with the burning in her muscles – if it were her facial muscles burning.

She didn’t have much time to gather herself when Erzsébet was already at her side, kneeling beside her and peering at her through her bangs of hair that had fallen over her face. “Are you alright, Natallia? That was really great skiing!”

There were tears in Erzsébet’s eyes, tears that baffled Natallia for one long moment before she remembered that people did cry out of happiness too.

She wondered how that felt.

Erzsébet was draped in the Hungarian, Natallia noticed. She also noticed the horde of reporters waiting to the side.

She pursed her lips. When the world was set on reducing female athletes to wives and girlfriends and asking them what they ate or who they slept with…it didn’t hurt to give a fellow woman some genuine support. Even she could manage that much.

 

“It suits you,” she said. Erzsébet’s smile brightened, as strained and exhausted as it was.

Natallia hated it, didn’t really like Erzsébet in the first place, but the Hungarian’s happiness was contagious. Even though Natallia believed in the _second place is a lost first place_ idea, just like her coach, she couldn’t help but give a tentative smile at the victor of Pojkulka.

 

Erzsébet extended her hand out as her other clutched at the corners of the Hungarian flag that fluttered in the light breeze. “Let’s get you up, then. Others are coming.”

Natallia wasted a few complementary seconds more before taking Erzsébet’s hand. “Yeah, lots of people to get congratulatory hugs from.”

“Are you holding out on me on purpose, Arlovskaya?” Erzsébet snorted, which turned into full blown laughter when Natallia simply shrugged her shoulders.

“I wouldn’t say so, Héderváry,” she said. “I’m just saying you need to catch me if you want a warm embrace.”

“Oh, don’t think I won’t,” Erzsébet said with a cheerful wink.

 

Erzsébet Héderváry wasn’t a liar, at least.

 

Lukas’ week and weekend in Pojkulka were considerably better than the previous one in Sweden, and this time Natallia had time to watch him skiing and shooting. He was, at most, average at skiing, according to most commentators and fans of the sport, but he managed to grab a fifth place in the men’s sprint with twenty seconds to the victor, Francis Bonnefoy.

The two had exchanged words after that competition, vaguely friendly and distinctly competitive, before going their separate ways to focus on the chase that would be the day after women’s.

Things had started off on a negative note when a Finn had fallen and taken Lukas down with him on one of the hills, which had Lukas lose about fifteen seconds, but his shooting (five out of five) on the first spot saved him. Francis, for some reason, had fumbled in the first shooting – two misses, two extra laps around the penalty route beside the shooting range – and fallen behind. He had been 14th or so when he crossed the line out of the shooting range.

Lukas had arrived to shoot the second time about ten seconds after the leader – a tall, well-built Czech – and took all give targets down again, although taking some time with shooting and slipping the gun back over his shoulder.

From there on, shit happened as the wind grew stronger: from the next shootings, Lukas got four misses whereas Francis got three more, and a German with the name of Ludwig Beilschmidt took the lead after the fourth shooting. And thus, it became a skiing competition – something that did not always occur in biathlon.

In the end, Lukas finished third even despite the misses from the last two shootings, barely keeping Francis behind his back and barely missing out on the second place as the lanky Czech (Domen Vertsek, perhaps) got his skis over the finish line first.

The first podium of the season – the first podium since competing at this level, even – looked good on Lukas, whose face was uncharacteristically lively throughout the flower ceremony and the national anthem. Natallia had been watching; there was something fascinating in the success of someone so dear.

And the reporters got their weekly report on the women’s love lives when Natallia gave Lukas a kiss in front of the cameras.

(“What are you doing?” Lukas muttered in Norwegian.

Natallia said simply, “Social media will go crazy, so why not.”)

 

 

The last competitions before the Christmas break and before Natallia’s return to home to and with her siblings took place in Nové Město, Czech Republic. In a surprising turn of events, snow in middle Europe had decided to say _da pabačeńnya_ to winter and melt away. Luckily artificial snow was an option, but it meant more working hours for the organizers with small salaries.

The end result was good, though, and impressive to even Natallia, who considered herself as immune to most accomplishments around her.

“Arlovskaya,” her coach told her after the first skiing on the fresh snow and the adjusting of the gun. “I expect great things from you, but don’t push yourself as far as you did last weekend. The relay team does need you in future.”

She considered his words, thought about Héderváry’s back, and both their drives to win. “I’ll try my best in achieving that amongst other things.”

Igor smacked his lips, judgmental as always, but his eyes were marginally softer than usual. “I see you’re made of sturdier material than I gave you credit for previously.”

The moment of softness was gone soon, when Igor let out a huff. “However, do not fraternize with the Norwegian boy this week, Arlovskaya.”

“I’m no man, there’s no _frat_ _ern_ _izing_ involved.”

“Don’t talk back to your coach.”

“All right, all right,” Natallia said lightly. Not talking back didn’t necessarily mean she was going to follow his advice, though. Where there was a will, there was a way, or so Alfred had kept saying last summer after drinking too much of the spiked punch.

 

 

“Today’s start-up looks miiiighty fine,” Alfred stretched his vowels like a drunkard into the microphone while Ivan looked at him from the corner of his eye. Alfred had found a white-lined red cap meant to mimic that of Santa Claus’, and the American even had put jingle bells hang around his neck.  Did he carry those around?

“Have you had too much egg nog already?” Ivan wondered, lips forming a slight smile. “I knew Americans had a bad tolerance, but _really_?”

“Hey! I’m just excited about biathlon, dude.”

“Because you just love the sport so much,” Ivan murmured. “How admirable.”

“Awwww, dude, I’m so glad you see it my—wait, I heard sarcasm. Ivaaaaaaaaan…”

“Not as drunk as I assumed,” Ivan said wryly, “drunk Alfred would never be able to read the atmosphere.”

Alfred snorted, pushing at Ivan but barely even moving Ivan from his seat. “Real funny, dude. Do you get off on egging me on or—“

“I’m sure you’d like to know,” Ivan said, eyes half-lidded as he regarded Alfred with a half a smile. The quick flush that rose on Alfred’s cheeks was worth it, definitely.

“Oh, shut up,” Alfred huffed, tugging at his collar. The bells jingled, and the race was on. “Gee, here I was going to give the juicy details on recent relationship news, but you ruined it.”

“What a shame,” Ivan smiled into his hands as he leaned away from Alfred and towards the unfolding competition.

“Yeah, expect angry emails about this,” Alfred muttered before he paused suddenly. “Oh, wait, today’s the _sprint…_ ”

“Really, Alfred?” Ivan couldn’t help but laugh. “You’re not doing much to prove your sobriety.”

“I mean it’s hard stay sober when you’re next to me, man,” Alfred retorted. “Russians are, like, 40% vodka. I have a theory.”

“Of course you do.”

“But that’s irrelevant now,” Alfred said. “The thing is that we won’t have to miss out on the juicy gossip I’ve gathered this week for y’all listening back home.”

Ivan cursed under his breath.

 

 

The thing about sprints was that there was really no way of knowing how fast one should ski from the start, and so many took the first couple kilometers with brakes on, so to speak. Natallia had no brakes, not in biathlon and not in life.

In biathlon, like in life, this could be costly.

Not this time, though, not this time, even though her team along the route told her Erzsébet Héderváry was coming fast from the back, almost surpassing the time Natallia had set for the first 800 meters or wherever the sensors were.

Not too bad, Natallia figured, as long as she shot down the targets at the shooting range, she would be able to speed up a little more. She had discussed the game plan with Igor, he had drilled the plan into her mind like he did with many others. First laps calmer, so the shootings would go well; after that, _ski like there’s hellhounds after you, Natallia._ Alternatively, the same mental image but with Igor being the chaser instead of innocent hellhounds.

Her skis slid well on the snow, which made pushing on and up a tad easier, although in the slopes she felt herself slip before reaching the top, her legs regaining balance as she already went downhill, passing another biathlete dressed in colors of one of the Nordic countries.

Could have been Marja, may not have been, and it didn’t matter at this point.

She arrived at the shooting range for the second and the last time in good condition, her breath much calmer than the last time. The wind, however, wasn’t. It continued to play with the long curls of Natallia’s hair that even the tight ponytail couldn’t control. Natallia gritted her teeth, blinking a few times before focusing her gaze to the targets.

Squeezing one eye shut, she adjusted the gun’s position and aimed, heart drumming in her chest both from tension and exhaustion. The audience’s cheers came from a distance; she tuned it out, inhaled carefully and exhaled again.

First target down. Someone dropped their sticks beside Natallia.

Second target down, even though the nose of the gun swayed from the sudden burst of wind. Natallia swallowed, her throat dry and warm, pulling the trigger for the third time.

Third target down. The athlete beside Natallia missed, based on the audible gasping from the audience.

Fourth target down – Natallia’s arms shook, but she aimed for the fifth one. A second later, the fifth one went down, and Natallia threw the gun over her shoulders, on her back, before grabbing her sticks and kicking herself forward.

She thought she heard Igor yelling something indecent in Russian. It wouldn’t be surprising.

She might have heard Lukas’s voice somewhere, but _that_ was surely nothing but imagination; he had his own race to focus on.

No time to dwell on it, Natallia just kicked her skis forward. A truth in life and biathlon: the only way to go was forward.

 

 

“Do you ever just—get these thoughts that seem so deep in the moment but become ridiculous when you’re not experiencing an adrenaline rush?” Natallia mused.

“Every time I have sex,” Francis said.

“Often when I find myself in his company,” Lukas said, gesturing at Francis with his elbow, “But I think it must be his cologne.”

Natallia gave Francis an unimpressed stare, but he merely gave her a wink before sipping at his drink. She had arrived when they had already ordered, so she wasn’t entirely sure _what_ he was drinking, but at most it could only be terrible beer, and more likely expensive latte.

“Maybe it’s just my company,” Francis said, “I hear it’s very… thought-provoking.”

“It provokes something, all right.” The rough, edgy voice was deeper than Lukas and Francis’, and came from directly behind Natallia.

Francis’ change in expression was rather comical: after dropping the spoon he used to stir his drink with, his eyes widened and lips parted from stunned surprise _before_ his face took on his usual, at least semi-flirty and semi-intrusive smile.

“Arthur, did you drop in from all across the ocean just for my sake? I didn’t think you cared that much, _mon ami_.”

“‘ _Mon ami_ ’ me again, and I’ll go back where I came from,” Arthur Kirkland muttered as he sat down beside Francis with some trouble as he had to lean on the cane he had with him. Natallia saw that the blond man looked exhausted and stiff, and a lot of it wasn’t even the injury’s fault from what Natallia knew of him.

Francis laughed, and for the first time Natallia detected some nervousness in the man. She straightened herself, biting back a smirk. This ought to be good.

“Always so straightforward,” Francis said, smiling. “How’s your leg? You had the operation recently in Switzerland, no?”

“You would know if you called me more often,” Arthur said, but the smile that put his eyebrows at ease contradicted the harshness of his words. “They kept me there for a couple of days, but I got out and rang Pierre.”

“ _Pierre_?” Francis’s turn to act affronted as Natallia calmly sipped at her hot chocolate. “I didn’t know you had his number.”

“I got to know him pretty well at one of your off-season get-togethers,” Arthur shrugged as he dug out a wallet. “I’ll get something for myself before anything—“

“No, no, let me.” Francis put his hand over Arthur’s.

Lukas had already stopped paying attention at this point as he checked his emails and social media on phone, occasionally looking up at Natallia with the kind of face that suggested he thought she was getting too much amusement out of seeing Francis a little ruffled for once.

The competitions had been held, victors had been given flowers, and everyone was in at least a decent mood, if not a fantastic one.

Natallia was already thinking about the Christmas holidays that she’d spend with her family at Ivan’s house, but the concepts of family and time together always made her either nostalgic or uneasy, so she took the distraction Francis and Arthur’s interactions offered.

“I take it you’re the mystery lover Bonnefoy sometimes alludes to,” Natallia said when Francis had stood up to go buy Arthur something, presumably a lame latte. “Alpine skiing, was it?” She feigned ignorance, despite the fact that he used to live in same neighbourhood as Lukas.

“I’m frankly surprised he’s managed to keep it to himself,” Arthur said, wiping the longer strands of hair away from his startlingly green eyes. “He seemed to be much more open than what was strictly necessary when we met for the first time…ten years ago.”

Arthur grimaced at his own words. “Saying it out loud is bloody strange, I’ll tell you that.”

Natallia couldn’t even remember that far back in her life. “Couldn’t get rid of the leech?”

“Natallia,” Lukas scolded, keeping his eyes to the screen of his phone. Natallia could see he was looking into the world cup points in the different competition modes of biathlon. He liked knowing statistical facts; she didn’t as much.

“Oh, she’s not wrong,” Arthur said. “He’s insufferable.”

“I’d say opposites attract but,” Francis said as he arrived back to their table, placing a cup of steaming tea before Arthur, “that would be a lie, dear Arthur.”

“I guess this is why your relationships could never be leaked to the reporters,” Lukas mused. “No one would take that claim seriously.”

“Not that it’s anyone’s business in the first place,” Arthur shrugged as he picked up the cup of tea, eyes sliding shut as he sniffed at the warm scent wafting up. “As far as the world is concerned, we could fuck in public and we’d still be ‘great friends’.”

“And even that would be seen as a stretch,” Francis added dryly. “I’ve read some of the more gossipy articles on you two, by the way; did you know they think it was _love a_ _t first sight_?”

Natallia nearly spat the hot liquid she had been swallowing out of her nostrils as she snorted with laughter. “That can’t be right.”

Lukas looked skeptical, too. “What kind of articles have you been reading, Bonnefoy?”

“Oh, the usual ones,” Francis said dismissively.

“Not porn,” Arthur chimed in helpfully, and Francis narrowed his eyes at him. Arthur continued drinking the tea like Francis wasn’t even there. “Pierre really loves discussing his reading habits, just so you know.”

“I need to have words with that boy,” Francis mused, patting at Arthur’s knee. “Where are you staying over the weekend, Arthur?”

“Well,” Arthur pursed his lips. “I have an acquaintance a little way from here, and he’s promised to take care of me already. Why, did you intend to invite me over?” The sarcastic bite in his words made him immensely more bearable to Natallia, although the seemingly never-ending need to bicker was killing that impression.

Francis, despite his initial surprise at meeting Arthur, seemed nothing but content now. “Why, is mind-reading one of your skills now? I thought you were limited to the ability to break your legs on demand.”

“Maybe we should leave them alone to flirt,” Lukas suggested to Natallia as he finished his cup of black coffee. “Might as well do some late Christmas shopping.”

Natallia glanced at Arthur and Francis going at it with lukewarm arguments and sharp glares. The preferable option was obvious.

She stood up, lips up in a crooked smile. “You going to buy my present in my company? How daring.”

“Don’t be stupid,” Lukas said. “Yours I got a long time ago.”

“Liar,” Natallia snorted, lightly shoving her elbow at his side. “You told me ages ago you’re awful at figuring out presents.”

“Ah, young love,” Francis’s voice interrupted them as they were putting on their jackets, and the look on his face was sickeningly amused. Natallia flipped him off. Francis’ knowing look didn’t change at all—or, if it did, it just got worse.

“Have you ever considered ignoring him?” Lukas asked later when they were out of the café, their arms linked as they did some window-shopping. “He only gets more encouraged when he’s given attention.”

“Oh, you haven’t seen him when he feels ignored,” Natallia grumbled. “He’s even worse than Katya.”

“If you say so,” Lukas mumbled, wholly unconvinced.

 

After the weekend came to an end, the situation in the world cup situation hadn’t changed much.

Overall, Natallia was second—after three competition weekends and many more competitions, it was a good situation to be in, which was exactly what Igor told her. Feliks piped in with his cheerful messages too: _YOU’RE ON FIRE GIRL_ and other such lame cheers, which surprisingly put Natallia at ease.

In the men’s overall cup, Lukas was fourth, but not too far away from the leader (Francis, thanks to his several wins) points-wise.

The break came at a good time, really. A month and a half of consistent traveling around had tired Natallia out even more than in the previous season, and Lukas being all weird and distant every now and then did nothing but give Natallia more distractions. Although, she thought, she wasn’t much better at being honest either: always a little too clingy, always a little too—

So, it felt good to reunite with her family… and Alfred, who had also decided to visit Ivan over Christmas, although the Braginsky family never celebrated the holiday very much.

“I’ll change that,” Alfred had said, living up to his American heritage of consistent insistence.

Natallia hadn’t seen him since summer, but she wasn’t surprised by the confidence Ivan had claimed the American to make the statement with.

Either the break was going to be a good one – or immensely exhausting.

 _Tune in_ _to find out which,_ Natallia texted Feliks right before getting on an airplane.

 

 

The drive from Saint Petersburg to their family house was a long and arduous one, but Natallia had spent enough time traveling whether in a bus or in a cramped car with other biathletes that it rather felt like another trip to a middle European country for a competition. Only, in this case she had to suffer through Alfred’s commentary and stories.

At least he wasn’t driving—Ivan was.

“I would have thought you would have a little classier car,” Alfred said. “I mean, no offence, but—Volvo? Really?”

“That’s funny coming from a guy who, ah, shat his pants the first time he tried a Ferrari,” Ivan said lightly, but Natallia saw the way his hands twitched on the steering wheel.

Alfred, on the passenger’s side of the front, protested adamantly, but it was too late; there was no stopping Natallia from seeing it happen in her mind.

Katya hogged half of the backseat, but there was plenty enough room for the smaller Natallia. If only Katya wasn’t so into physical contact.

“It’s been so long since we’ve spent any time together,” Katya was saying, her arm linked in Natallia’s, and fully ignoring any discomfort her little sister might be enduring. “You’ve been gone for too long, little sister.”

“Is grandmother visiting this year?” Natallia interrupted the sentimental babbling as Katya’s eyes had already started to water. She liked her sister well enough, but all the crying was unbearable, especially since Ivan seemed to care more for those from Katya than from Natallia.

Katya paused, visibly scrunching up her nose as she considered her answer. _It shouldn’t be that har_ _d to answer a yes or no question,_ Natallia thought.

“She’s been hospitalized the past few weeks,” Katya said, wincing under Natallia’s unrelenting eyes. “We didn’t tell you since, you know…”

“How bad is it?” Natallia murmured. Thankfully Alfred up front kept up loud enough chatter for Ivan to not hear.

“It’s not _alarming_ , currently,” Katya said quietly. “It’s her hip, mostly. She’s been skiing even when the doctor told her to limit it.”

“That sounds like her, then.” Natallia couldn’t judge grandma for doing what she loved even despite the risks. She had done the same plenty of times before, much to the chagrin of everyone involved. “Has anyone visited her?”

She doubted it, since grandma refused to move out of Minsk to Saint Petersburg where most of her relatives lived. The topic kept coming up every time one of the siblings would visit her – save for Natallia, who understood her reasons and found Belarus a beautiful country – but so far grandma Arlovskaya had stayed firm in her decision to live by herself.

Katya’s answer was exactly as Natallia had expected it to be. “No; Ivan and I have been busy with work, and mother dislikes traveling for any reason.”

Natallia hummed, skipping one question that had been on her mind. She would find out sooner or later. “How is Mihail?”

“As happy a cat as he’s ever been,” Katya chirped, her face brighter now that the topic had been changed. Smiles suited her face much more than they did Natallia’s; a fact of life Natallia had noted many years ago. “I bet he misses you.”

“I doubt that.” But the thought was pleasing, and Natallia had missed the Russian blue nevertheless. Mihail had been a good company when the worst of teenage years had been rough on her. Asides from her skis and sticks, Mihail had been a therapeutic presence in absence of actual mental healthcare.

“Who’s Mihail?” Oh no. Alfred had caught that exchange, and was peering at the duo in the backseats. “More of your off-record boyfriends?”

“He’s a _cat_ ,” Natallia said, rolling her eyes. “That seems more like your thing, Alfred Jones.”

Ivan chortled at that. “I have yet to ascertain that, but I wouldn’t be surprised, Natasha.”

“Excuse me!” Alfred’s indignant screech nearly had them all choke on their laughter. Save for Katya, who had always been a little reluctant to tease Alfred as much as Natallia or even Ivan.

It was going to be a wonderful Christmas.

 

 

Wonderfully _noisy_ , at least, Natallia rectified her statement hours later as they settled down to have a meal in the kitchen. Their parents no longer lived in the house, so the halls reeked of emptiness and dust, especially when no one had bothered to clean thoroughly for a while now. Alfred didn’t complain about that, at least, but he was noisy enough about everything else.

“This is a photo of the three of you, right?” Alfred pointed at one of the few photographs situated on the wide kitchen table. The frames had gone dusty, and the photograph’s colors looked too bright, but it was a treasure for the three of them.

Natallia was still a preschooler in it, dressed up in too-loose clothes that were hand-me-downs from Katya. Somehow, she had managed to snatch Ivan’s long scarf from the second grader and wrapped it around hers, although it looked like she was drowning in on the hand-made piece of clothing. It was the first scarf Yekaterina, Katya, had ever made; at the time of the photograph, Katya was already eleven, just as kind as she was to this day.

Ivan and Katya huddled close together in the photograph with Natallia in the middle, a deeply unimpressed look in her eyes as most of her face was covered by the scarf. Katya was smiling that innocently gentle smile that she was known for, and Ivan… just looked awkward, like he didn’t want to be with his sisters and in the photo in the first place.

“He’s adorable,” Alfred said, confused. “I can’t believe Ivan Braginsky used to be _adorable_.”

Ivan, seated at the end of the table while Katya was preparing some borscht, looked at Alfred and the photograph he was waving at their faces. “I’ve seen baby pictures of you, _dorogoy_. I could say the same.”

“I’m still fucking adorable, and you can fight me on that,” Alfred said, not without laughter. “Why do you think our broadcast is so popular?”

“Certainly not because of our chemistry,” Ivan said dryly. “I guess it must be you, then.”

“Yeah, that’s right—wait, that’s sarcasm _again_.” Alfred had already got excited before the realization and the following sink of his smile. Natallia tried not to laugh at his face by checking her social media alerts – majority of which came from Feliks, as usual.

“Brother, don’t be such a brat,” Katya said in her heavily accented English, giggling at her little joke when Ivan gave a huff. Natallia would have snorted, but Katya had made the same joke literally dozens of times before so it was getting ancient by now. Alfred just seemed confused, but no one was going to let him in on the joke just yet.

Natallia spied a squirrel on the winter landscape that opened up right behind the kitchen window, and followed the little animal’s twitchy, frantic movements up a tree.

Winter at home was so different from winter in foreign lands, even when there was no distinct difference in the looks. The snow was entirely an unblemished white, and the snow-covered tree branches bent underneath the weight of it.

Natallia used to play a lot in the snow with Ivan, who had been patient for a boy few years older than her. At least, that was before Ivan got into cross-country skiing on a competitive level and started staying away from home for long periods of time.

And when he did come home, he was distant and far away from Natallia even when they shared a room. As a teenager, she hadn’t understood. Sometimes she wondered if she did now either, but she opted to not think about it.

After Ivan’s injury and knee surgery—the latest of many—they had grown closer, but it still lacked the warmth from before. If anything, their mother’s lukewarm borscht was the perfect metaphor for it: not the worst in existence, but it could be better.

“Natallia?” Alfred eyed at her weirdly with both eyebrows up high on his brow. “You alright there, buddy?”

“That’s not how you pronounce my name,” Natallia said, tilting her head and pushing her cheek against the palm of her hand. “Katya, how’s that borscht coming along? It’s been hours already.”

“Don’t be so impatient,” Katya said, turning her head to give them all a slight smile. “Now’s a good time to catch up more. How _has_ this season been so far, Natalka?”

She had always been called Natalka by her family—sometimes Natasha, depending on how _Russian_ Russian the family member identified—but only Feliks made it sound like the endearment it was supposed to be. Lukas hardly ever used it, save for one or two occasions.

“Ivan and the boy toy already talk about it for a living,” Natallia said, rolling her eyes as Alfred made an indignant sound. “And I’m sick of talking about it _and_ my love life to reporters.”

“Fair enough,” Katya hummed, undeterred by Natallia’s stand-offish tone and stare.

“What have _you_ been up to, sister?” Natallia asked just before Ivan could form the same question, “I don’t think you’ve posted anything even on Instagram, and usually you spam that one.”

“Oh, you know, this and that,” Katya said, disturbingly vaguely. She had always been oddly secretive over certain matters even though she couldn’t keep a secret to save a life. A contradiction that bothered and annoyed Natallia, but she had decided not to delve into her siblings’ issues after her own dependency problems became all too apparent.

Natallia’s fingers twitched over the phone. She had been trying to type a message to Lukas for the past fifteen minutes, but making it sound casual and not at all neurotic proved out to be a challenge that she wasn’t fully equipped to face.

“Fucking a dude, is what I’m hearing,” Natallia decided. “Or a woman. Non-binary.”

“Natalka,” Katya whined, and Natallia guessed she had covered her mouth as her voice was partially muffled. “I told you I would tell you if I found the right person! You’d be the first to know.”

“After me, of course,” Ivan piped in cheerfully, his voice taking on the disconcerting quality of suggested murder. “Only the best for my big sister.”

“See, that’s why your big sister sustains from dating,” Alfred said dryly. “Give her some breathing room, guys.”

“Says the guy with the least knowledge of personal space and how to maintain it.” Natallia rolled her eyes at him after finally settling on a simple message for Lukas. _Merry almost-Christmas_ , it said, awkward and incredibly fake, but it wasn’t the words that counted, sometimes.

She missed him, already. That was the problem every time.

 

There was nothing like a morning ski. Some preferred jogging, but Natallia found that the brisk morning wind against her face as she went down a slope and the crunch of snow beneath a pair of skis was much better. It was a habit she had taken up from her Belarusian grandmother, Tatyana Arlovskaya, and one that continued to remind her of her childhood,or the better parts of it, at least.

That morning, the beginning of the first full day back home in a while, was as nostalgic as Natallia had expected.

The sun was up strangely early for a late December morning, turning the snow to glittering diamonds, and it warmed what little of Natallia’s skin was visible beneath the layers of clothing on her. The presence of the sun on that morning made her also thankful for the sunglasses she had taken with her. The glare from the snow was the _worst_.

Their house was a little ways off from the nearby village, which left plenty of space for skiing and not running into any of the nearest neighbours, save for the postman who came with his truck often just when Natallia was skiing, although today Natallia hadn’t started as early as she normally would have.

Natallia breathed in the fresh air of home, and as her muscles relaxed into her steady rhythm, she realized she hadn’t felt this relaxed in a while. There was always something to be annoyed about, someone to annoy in return, and something weighing in on the back of her mind. Little by little, all those things piled up, like her annoyance with Erzsébet even though Erzsébet had done nothing wrong other than being supremely good at what she did.

Natallia was convinced the small moment they had shared after one of the competitions must have been just a figment of her imagination: the teary cheeks of smiling Erzsébet Héderváry had not moved anything in her.

But there was no Erzsébet, no competition, here. Just nature, Natallia, and the memories of how it all began.

 

 

She had been a small child, but already in school by the time grandma took her out to ski with her for the first time. Natallia had been introduced to skiing in Phys. Ed., but it hadn’t struck anything special in her until those mornings and afternoon spent skiing in the countryside of Belarus. Up and down slopes of different sizes, on and on in the uneven fields and forest paths.

Sometimes the birds would sing, which would always feel strange in wintertime. Tatyana was big on bird-watching as well, and so she would point them out to young Natallia and tell her short anecdotes on how different bird species had affected her life personally somewhere along the long years of her life.

She spent her winter vacations over there long into her teen years until she started competing more seriously, and she had a photo album full of pictures from back then. It was the only album that she took with her whenever she had to move out of an old apartment, probably the only thing she’d save if a fire should occur.

Nikolai, Tatyana’s second husband, taught Natallia how to handle a gun.

“I only share this with my favorite step-grandchildren,” he had explained, stroking his beard while looking like he was about to burst into laughter. He had never taken Katya or Ivan to the forest to practice. Sometimes he would even braid Natallia’s hair before their practice session in the cold winterland.

In retrospect, it was no wonder that the biathlon had appealed to Natallia when she discovered the sport while she had mindlessly shuffled through the paid channels on Nikolai’s television.

One thing eventually led to another, and Natallia joined Belarus’ team at the cusp of adulthood, though it took a couple seasons to firmly secure her place at the world cup level.

Tatyana and Nikolai had come watch her on occasion when the competitions landed in Russia, which was for one weekend of the season if they were lucky and the organization didn’t decide to give the competition to Finland for one reason or another.

Nothing had ever made her happier, really, or at least other happiness was of different kind than the feeling of unconditional support and love, which she had felt only a contrived version from her siblings.

Well, that’s what the teenager had figured. As an adult, Natallia was more willing to buy what they sold as genuine affection.

But even so, there was no replacing the childhood memories of long skiing trips across the local forests and hills with breaks for hot cocoa littered plentifully between.

 

 

The morning grey had finally melted away at noon, and Natallia took the time to take a break and opened her thermostat bottle of hot chocolate. Indulging every now and then wasn’t so terrible, even though her coach advised against it; Igor wasn’t there to scold there, which made it all the easier to think _fuck_ _it_ and just go for it.

The forest was thick around their family house, and the ground was bumpy enough to be a challenge. Natallia had skied there often. Ivan used to ski with her when he had been doing his rehabilitation exercise or on the rare occasion of just feeling like it. But then they didn’t have hot cocoa or sandwiches with them; instead  there were crude-tasting sports drinks and Ivan’s palm on her shoulder.

Ivan hadn’t skied in a while, now. Not for fun, not for sibling bonding.

Natallia sipped at the hot chocolate, grimacing at the heat burning on her lips. She supposed Ivan would be showing Alfred around at this time—the local sights, the few that there were, as well as old trinkets from the attic. She would have been forced to join, probably, by Katya, who worried about her isolationist tactics sometimes.

She had been disgustingly happy to hear about Lukas—happy as in burst-into-tears happy – and had squealed about it for ages, telling her how important it was not to be alone even though Katya was alone all the time. A hypocrite, that’s what she was. To be fair, that’s all anyone was.

 

 

 

“Merry Christmas, Natallia,” Lukas said over the phone on the Christmas Eve, “Or really early Christmas if you’re not celebrating it till the 6th day next month.”

“You’re early either way.”

“Nordics get to go first, since Santa’s from Finland,” Lukas explained in a deadpan voice, as though it were a fact of life, uncontested by similar claims by Russia and Canada.

(Similar facts included: Alfred’s cheerful cultural insensitivity, Natallia’s crushing intimacy issues, and Ivan faking smiles especially when he was hurting the most.)

“I guess it makes sense Russia and Eastern Europe would be low on Santa’s list, then,” Natallia snorted. “You visiting your brother this year?”

“No, he’s—” Lukas gave a sigh that betrayed his emotions, “he’s not coming around this year. He’s cut all contact with mother and father.”

“Hm. You’re still friends on social media, right?” She had the feeling she was starting to sound more and more like Feliks with each passing mention of social media.

“Yes, but you know we don’t really use any of those.” Lukas’s voice dipped lower. “He calls, sometimes. He thinks it’s enough.”

The sharp edge of loneliness in Lukas’s voice stabbed at the part of Natallia’s heart that she guarded most fervently. Natallia bit at her lip, but otherwise her face remained impassive as she settled herself on the coach pushed onto the veranda of her home.

Snow fell from the night sky, and Natallia’s fingers were freezing against the case of the phone held to her ear. It was lonely, she understood. The numbness in her chest was that.

Why did homecomings always have to turn out so grim?

“Has he said that that’s all he wants?” Natallia inquired through gritted teeth. Temperature had dropped over the twenty minutes she had spent on the phone. “You know how young people are. Hard to figure out if you don’t ask them.”

“Natallia, you and I are still _young people_ too,” Lukas deadpanned, “He’s barely two years younger than me.”

“But he’s still a student, isn’t he? His life experience is shorter than ours.” God, Natallia sounded exactly like her mother. The thought had her gritting her teeth harder. That was a nightmare she didn’t want to fulfill.

“Life experience or life expectation? I can’t tell which you meant from your tone.”

“Hilarious,” Natallia smiled, just a little, “You’re visiting your parents, then? Merry Christmas to them.”

“Yeah, but they’re both working through Christmas Eve and Day, so mostly I’m just with their dog.” Lukas paused, and the following silence was heavy as Natallia waited for him to continue. “It’s nice, not having to be around anyone.”

“Animals are infinitely better than humans,” Natallia agreed, thinking of Mihail pushing up against her shins. “You keeping in touch with your teammates?”

“You keeping in touch with Andrei?”

“There’s no need to be so sarcastic,” Natallia sniffed, and Lukas gave a mild chuckle at that. Natallia felt a little warmer, despite the -20 degrees and snow. “I guess I’ll leave you to your devices now. Katya’s almost done with dinner, anyway. Merry Christmas, Lukas.”

“I love you,” Lukas said, fondly.

“Yeah,” Natallia said back. She paused. “I’ll see you when the season continues.”

The phone beeped when she hung up. Lukas was used to it by now, but she couldn’t help but feel guilty at her own emotional shortcomings. It wasn’t like she didn’t feel it. She just couldn’t admit it, even alone in the middle of the night.

 

 

“I’m so fucking stupid,” she said mournfully to Mihail, the Russian blue that lay on her lap without any intention of getting up even as the Christmas night grew heavier and darker outside. He had nothing meaningful to comment on her lack of emotional response to Lukas’s declaration with, but at least his fur was soft as she scratched at his neck gently.

Ivan and Alfred were out in Saint Petersburgfor Christmas time, which left just the sisters in the house. Natallia had withdrawn into her own room with Mihail, bored out of her mind when she wasn’t thinking about what the hell was wrong with her.

Feliks would give her an honest response, but there was a reason they didn’t have serious conversations. It had little to do with Natallia’s inability to improve upon feedback and everything to do with Feliks’s too flippant manner of presenting it. Too blunt, too raw.

There wasn’t anyone else she could call, though, and talking it through with Katya made her nauseous. The only couple she knew that was doing fairly well in terms of romance was Alfred and Ivan, and they were likely drunk at this point.

“Natalka?” Feliks’s voice was off, a little too high and slurred. There was a lot of background noise that made Natallia wince. Just where was Feliks at this time of night? “You miss me, huh?”

“In your dreams,” Natallia said unnecessarily harshly. Feliks’s reply was a tipsy giggle.

“True, and those dreams are goooooood,” Feliks said in the midst of laughter. “But yeah, what’s up? I wasn’t expecting you to call before next year, at least.”

“Well…” Explaining it to Feliks didn’t take long, since Natallia had a way of simplifying stories and problems, a skill which the friendship with Feliks had strengthened. Mihail bristled as Natallia’s knees shifted uncomfortable, and let out an impatient meow. Natallia’s free hand petted him in attempt to soothe.

“Natalka,” Feliks said solemnly, “this is, like, the plot of every dull teen movie ever.”

“Since when?”

“Oh right, you don’t watch those.” Feliks paused, probably to appear thoughtful even when he was likely grinning like an idiot. “Search your heart, Natalka, and tell me what you see.”

“Is that…is that a Disney quote?”

“Not directly, no. And if it were, I would shame you for not remembering. _Shame on you_ , Natalka, shame on your family—“

“Yes, yes, Mulan, I understood that reference,” Natallia clicked her tongue irritably. “I hoped you had advice to give, for once.”

“For once?” Feliks huffed, very much affronted. “Hon, when life gives you lemons, you make lemonade and make your enemy drink it.”

“Who’s the enemy here?” She shouldn’t entertain his silliness, but…

“Why, you yourself, of course,” Feliks said, and it became crystal clear he was at least halfway drunk. “Kick yourself in the butt, Natalka. Beat the mess out of the hot mess that is youuu.”

“Alright, I think _you_ need to go to bed,” Natallia snorted, trying to stifle her laughter. “If you’ll even survive to bed.”

“You underestimate my power, Natalka.”

“Star Wars, now?”

“So you picked up _that_ reference, but hesitated on the Disney? I’m heartbroken.”

“You’re drunk off your ass, dork,” Natallia huffed. “Get someone to take you home before something bad happens, you moron.” Her voice softened inperceptibly near the end.

“Fiiiiiine,” Feliks said in a long, whining wheeze. “See you later, or something.”

Natallia turned the phone off afterwards, already done with it for the night, and gently urged Mihail to leave her lap so that she could get on with her evening routines such as dressing into a nightdress and brushing her teeth.

The eternal truth: _your worst enemy_ _is_ _yourself._

 

 

After Christmas and New Year’s Day, it was time to get back on track – literally. Saying goodbye to Katya, who had only traveled to Östersund to watch the season’s first competition and then remained home in Russia, and Ivan had been easy thanks to the anxiety building up in Natallia’s gut.

Ruhpolding, Germany, wasn’t among Natallia’s favorite skiing routes, but she had done well enough last year and so expectations were high this year again, especially for women’s relay since Natallia’s teammates had a positive season so far results-wise. What better time to do even better than a few weeks before the world championships?

The relay ended up being the only highlight in Natallia’s week; team Belarus reached the finish line after Germany, whom the home crowd gave a standing ovation, but the rest of the competitions Natallia had no strength to do well at. It was bad enough as it was, Igor’s stern voice and disappointed eyes and the squirming of the entire team around her, but then the news broke out right before the men’s competition on Sunday.

“Miss Arlovskaya,” a painfully British journalist shoved their microphone at her, “what are your thoughts of Lukas Roersen’s positive doping sample?”

“What are my what on what,” Natallia deadpanned, sure she had misheard the question. Surely there were many other more correct interpretations of the hastily spoken questions.

The journalist, a lanky blond man, just stared at her like she was slow-witted. Well, fuck him too. “Your significant other has been caught using drugs to enhance his performance. Your thoughts on this?”

“You really couldn’t have worded that any less sarcastically, could you,” Natallia, already in a bad mood, scoffed, her underlying anxiety bubbling up at the mention of Lukas and… wait, what had the asshole just said? “Lukas doesn’t use any drugs, what on Earth are you—“

“The tests from last year came up positive with him,” the journalist persisted with a haughty tone. “So you did not know, even though you have been seeing him for months now?”

Natallia clutched at her elbow hard enough to feel her nails through the jacket. She had just wanted to watch the fucking competition, not be ambushed by sports journalists that had gone for scandals more often than genuine success stories.

“This is the first I’m hearing anything about it,” she said coolly, wrinkling her nose as she eyed towards the area where biathletes were stretching and prepping for the competition. She could see Francis’s striking figure amongst others, but Lukas was nowhere to be seen. The ball of anxiety tightened in her stomach, pulled at her veins.

Shit. She should go look for him; she had access after her own race earlier that day – and so she left the masses of reporters behind, irritated beyond belief at the dreadful Brit that bore the stereotypical expression of a bored, inbred nobility. She had plenty enough of her plate already what with fucking up with Lukas on Christmas and then fucking up with her skiing _and_ shooting. (Erzsébet’s lead to her in points had grown; a cause for rejoice for the Hungarians, but a cause for headache in Natallia’s case.)

 

 

She found Lukas inside the main building, where they usually started the day with checking their skis and other equipment before moving on to stretching and jogging as a warm-up. He had found a distant corner, presumably after being hounded by a number of people, and held his head between his hands like men who had lost a great deal in their lives often did. Natallia’s stomach churned, or maybe it was her heart. It was difficult to differentiate between the organs at the moment. Stabbing either felt painful in any case.

“Lukas,” she said before stopping herself and wondering what the _fuck_ was she going to say. She had a basic understanding of the situation, but it was superficial, just caught from the mouth of an arrogant journalist.

Lukas said nothing, but his fingers tightened around his blond tufts of hair. If he tugged at them any harder, they were sure to fall off. Fragile hair on the head of an enduring man.

It reminded her of the first time Ivan had sustained a serious injury, his closed-off face and dejected body language. Back then Ivan had been painfully clear about not wanting to talk to Natallia.

Remembering it now, Natallia’s insides squirmed with the old fear. But things and situations changed – most importantly, _people_ changed.

Natallia sat down beside Lukas and waited. She had only patience when she didn’t care, and this one she unfortunately cared for quite a lot.

“Lukas,” she tried again.

Lukas heaved out a sigh, but lifted his head regardless to look at Natallia in the eye. “I’m not surprised you of all people would find me.”

“You’re not exactly _hiding_ ,” Natallia pointed out, pressing her shoulder against his. “What’s the deal? I heard something about doping?”

“Straightforward,” Lukas mumbled, his voice muffled into the long collar of his turtleneck. “That’s the gist of it, though. We got word back from folks back in Norway that mine had come up positive.”

“Someone leaked it to the press, too?”

“Yeah, but it’s nothing new,” Lukas winced. “Skiing in Norway is serious business and reporters do anything for any scoops, although they’re less pleased if the scoop doesn’t concern a foreigner.”

“I can imagine. You off the team, then?” Natallia played at the corners of her shirt, her limbs fidgety the longer Lukas’s miserable tone dragged on. Not that her questions did anything to alleviate that, she thought.

The building was deathly silent aside from the two of them, even though there must have been staff around somewhere. Natallia paid no mind to it.

“Obviously,” Lukas said, clenching his hands that he had settled over his knees now. “Even though I have never… not even accidentally. I’m not Therese Johaug, for fuck’s sake.”

“No lip balm excuse, then?” Natallia gave a crooked smile entirely unfitting for the situation, at which Lukas gave a short, dry laugh when he usually would have settled for an unsettling deadpan face.

“None of that,” Lukas agreed when he had reined in the laugh that, while not outright hysterical, had been concerning enough. “I don’t think I’ll have the support of our skiing association, either. They generally don’t care about the lower-tier athletes…”

“’Lower tier’? What the _fuck_?” Natallia snapped. “You’ve been on the podium this season!”

“And my worse competitions have ended with a place barely qualified for the chase,” Lukas pointed out, annoyingly calmly now that he was talking about his season. Statistics and such, Lukas always seemed to calm down when talking about them whereas they just made Natallia more nervous. “It’s safe to say I’m dispensable as far as the team is concerned.”

Lukas sighed, much more wearily now. “I don’t know how my test results could have come back positive, but either way I’ll be banned from competing for at least two years, unless something miraculous happens. And I won’t be competing the rest of this season, naturally.”

“That seems harsh,” Natallia winced. She had heard stories from the Russian team, in biathlon _and_ in cross-country, about how difficult it was to come back after that. Not that she pitied anyone that doped, but…

“It seems reasonable when the accused is actually guilty,” Lukas said. “Less so, when it’s the other way around.”

Lukas peered at her from beneath his tousled bangs, his lucid eyes tainted red at the corners. “Why do you believe me, anyway?”

Natallia pinched at the skin of the back of his hand, earning a quiet huff. “Don’t be an idiot, Lukas. Do you really need it spelled out for you?”

Lukas’s eye didn’t widen, but they shone differently in response to the words, and Natallia smiled. Now he got it.

“You’ve,” Lukas started, pausing to consider his words before starting again, “you’ve got an awful way of communicating it sometimes, Natallia.”

“You’re one to talk.” Natallia kissed his cheek, damp as it was. He had taken it pretty hard, then. “I’m here for you, even if no one else wants to be.” Especially if no one else wants to be, her thoughts hissed.

“Fair enough,” Lukas said. A tiny smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. “That’s one thing you and Matthias agree on, I think.”

“Ew,” Natallia grimaced. “Thanks, I won’t say it again.”

Lukas laughed at her reaction, this time far more genuinely, and Natallia found she had only grown fonder of the sound as time had passed.

 

 

Keeping up with media had never been worth it. The entertainment side was absolute garbage, and the sports section was damn close to being just as bad if not even worse. In spite of all this, Natallia kept reading the short articles and pieces of news. By far the worst were the ones where the writer inserted personal opinions into the piece, because they never seemed to hold any favorable opinion of Lukas, and it pissed Natallia off much more than anything Alfred had ever said to her.

She had turned off her phone the moment the journalists and reporters had started calling her, but the bad thing about that was that she couldn’t contact Lukas while she was traveling around. From Germany to Italy, she sat through a flight and put up with too much Andrei and a distinct lack of Feliks, who wasn’t able to travel through the season with her like last time.

It was lonely, even though Natallia had tried to shake off that feeling and the need for people. Dependency on others could only do harm, the longer and worse it went on.

Antholz-Anterselva, where the Alps hung over the ski resort like doom and where the border to Austria lay near, was sunny but cold throughout the week spent there, as the weather forecast had promised. Natallia wasn’t about to throw the season just because someone had faked Lukas’s samples for doping tests, but the whole ordeal gnawed at her mind throughout the weekend to the point where her competitors gave looks of concern to her as she made the dumbest mistakes on the shooting range and the skiing track.

It was the last weekend before the couple weeks of break before the world championships in February, and it was supposed to go better than it then did.

Igor was not a happy coach, and even Andrei was less than the love-struck puppy he was just weeks ago. Although Natallia could hardly complain about the latter.

“You and I,” Igor told her, “are going to train hard for the next weeks, Natallia. World champs can’t end in this kind of fiasco, not again.”

She knew he had always wanted to coach the Russian team instead of the Belarusian, which was partially why he was harsh on the team in the later part of the season, but she had much more on her mind than just the sport and the team.

“I can’t, actually,” she said. She’d love to see Minsk again, since she lived there when she wasn’t a burden on her family, and she’d love to see grandma again for sure, but there was no time for that if she was going to fight the Norwegian skiing association and all of its committees.

“What is more important than the world championships?” Igor questioned with a tone that left no room for answer. Natallia wasn’t impressed as she left her skis to the maintenance team. “Olympics aside. But what the hell could be so damn important you would put aside your training?”

Before Natallia could give a scathing response, Igor’s face hardened as understanding flashed in his stone-gray eyes. “It’s that Norwegian, isn’t it? You’re getting yourself wrapped up in _his_ scandal.”

“Women,” Igor continued when Natallia said nothing, “you’re all the same, always ditching the important work when a _man_ comes along. My ex-wife was _exactly_ the same way—“

“I’m not ditching my training to have sex with him,” Natallia interjected, her hands clenched into fists as the boiling point approached. “I just need a few days to figure out _what to do_ about the fucking thing!”

“Yes, because obviously you can change the results of tests taken a year ago,” Igor spat at her, his irritation obvious in the deep furrow between his brows. “You take after Braginsky, and not in a good way.”

“On the contrary,” Natallia said icily, “I have learned many good things from him, learned _through_ him that one should never listen to assholes for a prolonged period of time.”

“What was that?” Igor’s eyes narrowed into slits, his irises almost unnoticeable under his pupils and drooping lids. “That is no way to speak to a head coach, Natallia Arlovskaya.”

“No, but it is how I talk to _assholes_.” Natallia grabbed her backpack and walked off, the rest of her team parting like the Red Sea in her wake.

For possibly the worst mistake of her career yet, it sure felt _good_.

 

 

At the very least, Feliks found the whole thing hilarious, as she had figured he would. The Pole was such an easy person to amuse, which in return made the pressure inside Natallia dissipate little by little.

“I can’t believe you _said that_ ,” Feliks laughed into her ear from the other end of the line. “Damn, wish I could have seen it, Natalka.”

“You would have enjoyed it, you drama queen,” Natallia snorted.

“You had better not have any regrets about it now,” Feliks continued. Natallia bit on her lip. He always knew what to say at the right time, no matter how funny or ridiculous he made his words sound. “This is too glorious to regret later.”

“I’ll try not to,” Natallia said dryly. “The consequences might change my mind on that, though.”

“Oh yeah,” Feliks sounded startled. “He’s going to pull you from the world championships, is he? But you’re the best of your team!”

“Well, you know _men_ ,” Natallia said with heavy sarcasm. “They and their boner for power.”

Feliks’s laughter was like cool water on a particularly sunny day – reinvigorating. “You are so _crude_ , Natalka. You got that from your big brother too?”

“I guess,” Natallia said. “You have met Ivan before, you tell me.”

“Oh yeah. The tall, bulky one with that long, _un_ fabulous scarf?” Of course that was how Feliks would remember Ivan instead of the skiing hero of Russia that he had been back when he had skied competitively. “Can’t say I got much of an impression of him when we met the last time. Seemed to be… feeling down, or something. Like, did your teenage angst phase come from him?”

“I _never_ had a teenage angst phase.”

“Excuse me, is this the same Natallia who told her own head coach to fuck off?”

“That has nothing to do with angst!” Natallia muttered, her free hand tugging at her hair and undoing the knots of braids. “It’s just the whole thing with Lukas is really… annoying.”

“You and him doing okay?” Feliks sounded worried, now. “Is this a ‘how to save a relationship’ call?”

“No, it’s _not_ ,” Natallia retorted, frowning as she glared outside from the window of her hotel room. “It’s more of a ‘how to salvage his reputation’ call. I don’t know what I’m doing; it’s hard to prove the allegations wrong unless it’s proved that the samples were switched with someone else’s.”

“Those are urine samples we’re talking about, right? Can’t you get a DNA test from those?”

“I _guess_ that’s possible,” Natallia said after a moment of thought. “It’s just a matter of getting the testers do that. I guess police would have to be involved for something like that.”

“Ooooh, and Natalka is still on the run from the cops,” Feliks snickered.

“I was thirteen! They can’t be looking for me _still_.” Besides, it was a harmless prank… sort of…

“What happens in Russia, stays in Russia, and haunts all your future endeavors, my friend,” Feliks said in his most fake-wise tone of voice. Feliks paused as something loud was heard in the background, and sighed. “Sorry, Natalka, but I’ve got to go. Mom’s still pretty bad.”

“Thanks for taking the time for me,” Natallia said stiffly, eyes closed and teeth gritting for the next admission. “I don’t… say it enough, but I’m lucky… to have you.”

“Awwww, darling,” Feliks cooed, “trust me, I know. You’re the luckiest.”

“Okay, enough of your ego,” Natallia snorted. “Say hi to your mother from me.”

“Will do! Good luck, Natalka.”

 

 

She would need that luck, in the end. Although, for reasons unimaginable, she was not taken off from the team for the world championships. Igor, much calmer when they next time met, told her, “It can’t be helped that you’re the best we’ve got, despite your prima donna tendencies.”

Natallia didn’t know what to say to that. She had been riled up when she had called him names, but that didn’t mean she particularly regretted it, which in turn made her apology moot and contrived.

“Thank you,” she said instead, somewhat humbly even though that didn’t come naturally to her. “I’ll do my best.”

“If your best is gold,” Igor said, “then I’ll be happy.”

He was never happy, so a gold medal wouldn’t really change that, she figured, but this time she kept her thoughts to herself.

“I will do my best to meet your expectations,” she repeated just as stiffly, her thoughts already going to what she should do about Lukas’s situation. She should talk to him first, maybe.

 

 

“I don’t know,” Lukas said to her suggestion when she had called him after she had returned to Minsk for the next couple of weeks of training. “It’d cause unnecessary trouble for everyone involved, not to mention my teammates…”

“Are you kidding me right now?” Natallia asked, incredulous. “You’ve been fucking accused of using _doping_ of all the fucking things!”

“That is irrelevant,” Lukas said. “Besides, as far as the media is concerned, doing anything else but accept it and stay in hiding is just fighting the inevitable and being unable to accept that the evil deed has been revealed to a wide audience.”

“And you’re just—going to let them punish you? For shit you didn’t even do?”

“It’s going to be a year or two at most,” Lukas said. “It’s hardly comparable to prison time. Fighting back would take much longer, in my experience.”

“And so not worth it?” She could see his reasoning, but this wasn’t just a misunderstanding in daily life. “Anything you’d win later on would be just viewed with suspicion and mistrust; would _that_ even be worth it?”

Phone calls with Lukas were annoying, since the man always resorted to nonchalance and indifference when he shouldn’t, and the nuances of warmth that might be there were entirely lost over all the other noise.

Lukas remained silent for a long time, which only added to her annoyance. Still, she waited, tapping her feet against the carpet.

“To be honest,” Lukas said, considering each and every one of his words, “it’s partially to do with the rest of the guys.”

“What, how come? Shouldn’t they support and defend you?” Not that Natallia would know anything about that, being so distant from the rest of team Belarus. They might practice together, but Natallia didn’t like to chit-chat during those times.

“Every man fends for himself,” Lukas said dryly.

“Kill or be killed?”

“You would say that,” Lukas mused, “but yes.”

“I thought Western—Northern?— Europeans were better than all that,” Natallia sniffed, “Such a superiority complex.”

“It’s worse, since individualism and the American influence are contributing factors, actually, but that’s a conversation for another time,” Lukas said sternly, though oddly softly for him.

“This isn’t over,” Natallia said. The afternoon was edging towards early evening, and she had a practice to run to soon. “I need to go now, but I _will_ bring this up again.”

“I’m sure you will,” Lukas said dryly. “Good luck with your coach.”

“I’ll need that, thanks.” She comforted herself with the idea that she would eventually see him again in Oslo if he didn’t come see her competitions otherwise. He wouldn’t come to South Korea, at least. Natallia would have to if she wanted to catch up Erzsébet in the world cup points.

Speaking of whom…

 

 

“That is a tricky situation,” Erzsébet mused as they both sat down for coffee. “I’d say hit everyone involved with a frying pan, but I’ve been told not everything can be solved with violence.”

“Whoever said that is terribly wrong,” Natallia said.  “Verbal violence is a thing.”

“If it works,” Erzsébet clicked her tongue. “I don’t know about you, but I’ve noticed athletes tend to have the hearts of an undead soldier. Nothing can affect them anymore.”

“Frying pans it is,” Natallia said as she settled down her tray of food. Major component: salad. Erzsébet was enjoying a more protein-based meal. “You’re a major success this season, so I thought you might have some sway over the officials and get them to actually investigate the affair.”

“You’re selling yourself short,” Erzsébet noted. “You don’t count yourself a success story?”

“An Eastern European here,” Natallia snorted. “That kind of balances that out.”

“Where do you think _Hungary_ is?” Erzsébet wondered with a bit of laugh in her voice. “Hungary is a small country biathlon-wise. Skiing in general, now that I think about it…”

“Oh, right,” Natallia winced, “There’s Norway… but that’s the problem country now. Central Europeans would work, but I don’t know Beilschmidtwell enough.”

“I know his brother,” Erzsébet sighed, “but Gilbert’s kind of airhead with things not about ski jumping.”

“Much help that is.”

Natallia picked at her food, her mind still buzzing with thoughts. Post-practice was always the worst time to have urgent issues, since her thoughts would zoom in on them unerringly. Kind of annoying, and definitely frustrating. It didn’t help that Lukas was so passive about the fucking thing—which bothered Natallia _more_.

“There’s Bonnefoy, though, isn’t there?” Erzsébet continued with a more hesitant tone. “He’s a leech and a complete ass on occasion, but you’re pretty close with him, right?”

Natallia had been toying with the idea, but she had tossed it aside as wishful thinking—besides, Francis had plenty to take care of with his boyfriend being a nagging ass while recuperating from the earlier injury. As well as whatever else there was going on in his personal life. According to rumors, there was plenty, and that was perhaps the most believable thing biathlon gossip had produced this year. But there was no denying that the Frenchman would be a useful piece to have on Lukas’s side—if not for anything else, then at least for the lawyer Francis had employed before.

Instead of answering with words, Natallia made a vague sound before holding her face between her hands. As expected, it didn’t really help.

Erzsébet gave her an emphatic look, and Natallia was loathe to admit it, but the woman wasn’t a terrible company. Not a terrible friend either, if Natallia allowed herself to call Erzsébet that.

“Call him,” Erzsébet told her again as they parted from the meal later.

 

 

She did need to tell Natallia twice, but eventually Natallia did it: grabbed her phone, scrolled to Francis’s contact info, and pressed CALL. The wait for the Frenchman’s voice was long and tedious – as long and tedious as whole thirty seconds—but when Francis picked up, it suddenly didn’t feel long enough.

“ _Madame_ _?_ ”

“Cut that shit, Francis.”

“Charming. Hanging out with Alfred recently, have you?” Francis sounded tired, even though he was a few hours behind Natallia. “I suppose not, considering the recent media circus.”

“I’m sure he’s plenty busy with my brother,” Natallia muttered, not bitterly for once. “That’s what I was calling you about, actually.”

“I’m not responsible for anything Alfred does, has done, or will do,” came from Francis so quickly Natallia was sure he had had to say the litany of words before at least a few times. Strange, she wasn’t aware they spent much time together.

“I meant the thing with Lukas,” Natallia clarified, “but thanks for letting me know who to blame for in future.”

Francis let out a few ill-placed French curses that Natallia took in with mild amusement. “Ahem, well. Yes, the thing with the love of your life—“

“Excuse me, I have _never_ called him the love of my _life_ —“

“—is unfortunate, but it’s confusing that he hasn’t done anything to defend himself. I spent a lot of time with him last year, there’s no way he had any time to get any sort of drugs.” Francis was a good judge of character, Natallia supposed, though she might only think so because she agreed with him on this one.

“Exactly,” Natallia said, “He says it’s because of team policy or some shit. Also he doesn’t want to be bothersome.”

“Oh dear,” Francis sighed. Natallia glared into the Minsk night that opened from her apartment’s sole window. “That boy is so silly.”

“ _Exactly_ ,” Natallia said, emphasizing the word as much as possible. “You’re a pretty big deal in the biathlon world, so can’t you, like, get any official investigation started into this? Like have them check the DNA from the... sample? It can’t be Lukas’ if and when he’s innocent.”

“It’s so hot when you talk like an investigator from a police drama,” Francis sighed wistfully.

“You only speak like that now that I can’t shove a ski up your ass, Bonnefoy,” Natallia said, the threat coming out as a weary sigh than the intended warning it had been meant as. “Watch out for your ass when the worlds come around. I haven’t been taken off the roster.”

“Oh my, and here I thought you were a one-man woman.”

“Shut up, I’m not in the mood for this. Just answer my question…s.”

“I’m not sure, to be honest,” Francis said, “I have… requested so much in the past. Like wine instead of prize money…”

“Are you _serious_ right now?”

“…company for those long lonesome nights I spend outside of France…”

“Francis, I don’t have his number, but I _will_ call that British boy toy of yours.”

“Fine,” Francis huffed. “You’re no fun, Natallia.”

“Back to the point—can or can you not do what I just asked? I was under the impression you at least like Lukas well enough to not wish him to be banned from the sport till you retire.”

“Only because you asked so nicely,” Francis said after a short moment of tense silence, “I will. Keep an eye out for the news.”

Natallia exhaled, a small smile blooming on her lips. “Thanks.”

 _I owe you_ , she was about to say before changing her mind. There were some things one should never say and give to Francis, upper hand being one of those.

 

 

The next few days she spent under intensive training on the skiing track and in the forests in the outskirts of the Belarusian capital with one of the assistant coaches hot on her trail. It was considerably less bad than she might have imagined previously, but that was due to the absence of the head coach, perhaps, as he was looking after the older yet unsuccessful athletes himself.

Stretching, running, skiing, as well as some strength training at the gym and shooting practice at one of the shooting ranges after it was closed to the public. Shooting turned out to be the trickiest part of the training regime, even though it had gone so well early on in the season, before Christmas and New Years break.

She was also able to visit her grandmother, who had been released from the hospital, between training sessions. She had avoided it for the first few days, but there was no avoiding the inevitable if only because Natallia had an active guilty conscience regarding family. (Partially the reason as to why she would be ready to kill for Ivan if he ever needed someone gone from the material world.)

Tatyana was still weak, but: being eighty-something and active enough to live on her own was an impressive feat and being eighty-something and still going skiing every morning even more so.

Her face was more wrinkled than Natallia remembered.

“You’ve been gone far too long if that’s what you think,” Tatyana told her when she said that, not unkindly and not even with the intent to admonish. Her face was severe, but, again, nothing out of the norm.

“Have you lost weight, Natalka?” she continued when Natallia had come inside and made herself comfortable. This time there was a tone of admonishment, as well as furrowed eyebrows directed at her, and Natallia smiled a little sheepishly.

“That’s not good at all, young lady. How do you expect to do well in your competitions if you have no energy to carry on? Today we will feast.”

“Grandma, no, I need to go back to my apartment early today—“

“Are you saying you _don’t_ want to spend time with your old teacher and grandmother? IS that what I’m hearing?” Tatyana turned to look at her from the front of the oven, lifting her eyebrows and daring Natallia to challenge that assumption. Natallia’s mouth twitched. _This_ was the grandmother she remembered, indeed.

“I’ll let my coach to know who to yell at tomorrow, then,” she said, although she doubted Igor would actually win a yelling match with grandma Arlovskaya. No one in her life had managed that: not her grandfather, not Nikolai—both of whom were dead, bless their souls wherever they were rotting—and certainly not Natallia’s mother.

Tatyana’s slight smile eased some of the wrinkles on her face. “A man of his status won’t stand a chance against me, sweetheart. Now, help me prepare this.”

Natallia did as she was told, quite happily in spite of herself, mostly helping her grandmother with cutting vegetables and setting the table. It was more than she had done for herself recently, since her evenings consisted of dinners out by herself now that she couldn’t share them with Lukas while he was stuck in Norway being yelled at the officials from his skiing association and possibly his skiing club too.

Unsurprisingly, Tatyana had heard about the chaos. Just as unsurprisingly, she confronted Natallia about it as they ate.

“That boy of yours,” she started in the middle of it, “is in a load of trouble, isn’t he?”

Natallia nearly choked on pieces of potato. It took a few uncomfortably long moments under her grandma’s watchful eyes before she was able to swallow them down. “You could say that.”

“You’ve been checking on him, right?”

Natallia blinked, a bit thrown off by the question. That precise one she hadn’t expected. “Of course I have. I call him every night.” He didn’t always pick up, of course, but that was another thing altogether. “He’s pretty quiet on how he feels about the whole ordeal. Some manly pride about keeping a lid on emotions, or something.”

“I wouldn’t expect anything different,” Tatyana said dryly, “Your grandfather was like that, especially when he grew sick.”

Natallia distantly remembered her grandfather, but she had been really young when he had died, so there was nothing she could say about that. “Nikolai wasn’t like that, was he?”

“Not to the same extent, at least,” grandmother said, her eyes hazing over as she recalled her second husband, now just as dead as the first one. “You have your grandfather’s stubborn streak, so that should help with dealing with that young man, at least. Not to mention with the upcoming world championships.”

The mention of the world champs had Natallia perk up. “Will you watch me, grandma?”

“Of course I will,” Tatyana gave a light snort before smiling more gently at her granddaughter. “You’ve been practicing your entire life, at this point. Last year you weren’t chosen for the team, but this year you will show all of them.”

It never ceased to amaze Natallia how much stronger her grandma was than most of the people Natallia’s age. Then again, she figured, she was young enough to not have seen even third of the shit Tatyana had. All in due time.

Regardless, it was comforting to have someone explicitly believe in her when others just took it for granted that she knew they supported her.

“Yes,” Natallia eventually said, “If it’s you watching, I can do anything.”

Perhaps she should feel that way about Lukas, but a relationship of approximately nine months was hardly enough to give her that level of confidence. Delight and sharp spikes of happiness, but not the good feeling of knowing that someone she had always looked up to was watching and supporting her.

Ivan was, earlier, that person in the absence of others.

And still, somewhere in her subconscious, she was obsessed with the idea of catching up to him in a sport that wasn’t entirely comparable with cross-country.

Idiotic, that’s what it was, and yet she thirsted for acknowledgement.

 

 

Lukas called her two days before the first world championships race. He hadn’t yet arrived in the country, but he would in the following day, or that’s what he told Natallia either way. She could trust his words, she knew, even though he had gone even quieter recently.

Natallia shared a hotel room with a younger teammate, but she was out, presumably introducing herself to the nightlife of Austria, which Natallia assumed to be as lukewarm as Roderich Edelstein’s tea. Although, she hadn’t seen him in a while. Maybe his tea had gotten better along the way.

Either way, she had the room to herself and had been watching television absent-mindedly and not at all focusing on the cheap plot of the crime show on the screen. It was the same as always, anyway: someone died brutally, investigators investigated, second murder happened, murderer got caught, and so on.

All in all, Lukas’s call was welcome – especially since she had been trying to keep herself from doing it all day.

“Hey, you,” Natallia said, “Stuck in Oslo, are you?” She hoped her tone was playful enough for the joke to be audible.

“Till tomorrow,” Lukas said, “I’ve packed my bags.”

“The late Christmas present, too?” Natallia wondered, with feigned tone of innocence. “You’re paying for each dinner, by the way. Make it up to me, and all.”

“Demanding,” Lukas hummed. He didn’t sound like he minded at all, though. Natallia smiled as she pulled her legs up on the armchair with her, absently tugging at the loose string of her sock. “Sure I’m not enough as a gift?”

“Hanging out with Matthias again, I see,” Natallia grumbled, and Lukas gave a short chortle, short-lived enough for Natallia to think it might have been someone else or background noise. “If you’ve learned any new tricks in the bedroom, _maybe_.”

“Who knows,” Lukas said in a not-quite deadpan. “You’ll have to find that out yourself after these two weeks.”

“Cute,” Natallia said. “I’ll make sure to take notes, since you’re hyping it up this much.”

Background noise on Lukas’s side grew, Matthias’s rough voice loud but his words unclear before Lukas retorted something in rapid Norwegian.

“What was that?”

Lukas exhaled, audibly annoyed. “He’s telling me to videotape it.”

“How does he know what—“

“He’s basically glued to my side, like the leech he is,” Lukas grumbled.

“Hey, Natallia,” she heard from the Dane.

“Try to… ignore him.”

“You’re asking for the impossible, Lukas.”

“Thought as much,” Lukas muttered, switching to his native to curse at Matthias before shuffling away somewhere. “Are you ready? For the world championships.”

“As ready as I can be,” Natallia said. “We’re going through the route for the first race tomorrow, but it shouldn’t be bad for me. I’m pretty good at climbing up hills.”

“How’s shooting? Last month didn’t… go so well, from what I saw.”

“Igor had me on the shooting range far more than necessary back in Minsk,” Natallia said. “Grandma took me out to hunt, too.”

“Your… grandmother?”

“It’s different kind of shooting, but the principle is similar,” Natallia said, “Patience and good nerves, all that stuff.”

“I rather meant what the hell kind of grandmother you’ve got, but sure,” Lukas said lightly with an accompanying snort of amusement, “I guess I see where you get it from.”

“Get what from?”

“Your… strength,” Lukas swallowed around the word, “I guess that’s the word for it. You stand so much, and are capable of so much—“

“Is this self-deprecation I’m hearing? I thought that was a Finnish thing.”

“Not really,” Lukas said, “Or, not that it is butFinns are contagious, actually. At least Tino’s much better about it than before. Lack of confidence doesn’t really suit a hockey player.”

“Good for him,” Natallia said neutrally, “Not that I don’t appreciate praise, but where was all that coming from?”

“I’ve had time to think,” Lukas said with another sigh. He did that a lot; it was like a second language to him. “We’ve been a little distant recently, but I’ve heard about your efforts to help me from Bon—Francis and others.”

“I didn’t really _do_ anything. And no one’s said anything about further investigation yet, so for all I know, it might all be useless,” Natallia muttered, her gut cold with anger. “Don’t thank me before we’re out of the mess, s—Lukas.”

The word _sweetheart_ died on her lips before she could even properly begin to say it. Amazing how she made fun of Lukas for being unable to utter terms of endearment, and yet turn out to be the exact same way.

“Well, about that,” Lukas interjected, “I received a call earlier today. They _are_ , in fact, going to investigate the situation and I’ve been asked for a sample of… well, you know.”

Never had she been gladder about the idea of urine samples, and never again would she be.

“I told you so,” she said, “It hasn’t all gone to waste.”

“You _literally_ just told me not to thank you before all this is over,” Lukas said, amused, “Either way, my thanks still stand. You’re… really something, Natallia.”

“If they don’t find you innocent after all of this,” Natallia said dreamily, “I will have to dig up my kitchen knives.”

“Calm down, miss serial killer.”

“I wouldn’t _kill_ them, just… threaten them a little.”

“That… does not make me feel any more comfortable about it, actually.” Lukas yelled something in Norwegian (or Danish) before continuing in English. “I need to get going again, but… thank you. I love you. Not just because of this—“

“I know,” Natallia interjected. She cleared her throat, cheeks flushed. “I… love you, too.”

If nothing else, she had managed to say the words without making a fool of herself. That was a first one. One good accomplishment for the month, at the least.

 

 

Her individual competitions started on a February Friday, and one thing most involved would remember of it: _freezing_ and _where did that wind come from all of a sudden_.

Her main event for the season had been sprint, mainly because shooting meant a little less there than in other events—it had proved out to be her best, too, precisely because of her problems post-Christmas break.

Ivan looked through his papers and the statistics marked on them, wearing a little smile as usual. Alfred had seen him do this dozens of times before, but there was something a little different now that he couldn’t pinpoint.

Maybe it had something to do with his little sister taking part in the soon –to- be unraveled race. Either way…

“Ivan?”

“Mm?”

“You alright, dude? You seem a little out of it.”

Ivan looked up, blinking at him. Not that there was much “looking up” involved in the concrete sense; Ivan remained at least an inch taller than Alfred. But right then he seemed small in that weird metaphorical and emotional sense that put Alfred at a loss.

“I’m fine.” Ivan’s voice was strained. “It’s just hitting me that my baby sister is… independent.”

Alfred raised an eyebrow. “Hasn’t she been of legal age for years now, dude?”

“Being adult in age and in spirit are two different things, dear Alfred,” Ivan said, looking away to hide whatever was on his face that Alfred mustn’t see. And quietly, “I suppose Katya and I both ignored that, too.”

“Uh, dude? Where’s this coming from? You drunk?”

“Not right now. Was yesterday.”

“So you’re _hungover_? What the fuck, man.”

“Shhh, not so loudly, _dorogoy_.”

“Fine. The race’s ‘bout to start, anyway. Let’s keep an eye out for your sister, ‘kay? She’s the reason you got the job, anyway.”

“Fuck off, Alfred.”

“Hey, keep it family friendly!”

 

 

She was used to sweat and damp armpits, unavoidable given her profession. She was used to people beside her making mistakes and succumbing to misfortune—hell, she had done the same a few times before in this season alone.

Maybe all the fumbling just a few weeks ago out of stress and worry had exhausted all the sources of numbing negativity in her core, because she felt none of it as she skied forward like she was chased by bursting flames and shot like she couldn’t possibly miss. And she didn’t.

It was freeing, though no longer escapism.

The pounding of her heart from exertion, the sweat beneath her fingerless gloves—and the cheers, the _cheers_ ; they had never been jeers, even though it had been hard to tell as a young Belarusian athlete at first.

The shots: ten bullets, ten targets _,_ _all down._

She did not stop to think about any of it, not when she still had kilometers left to ski, but she was so _close_ to a world championship title when she left the shooting range for the second and the last time. She did not have time to think, but if there was anything on her mind at all, it would have to be…

 

“Lukas!” She did not hop into his embrace, he was not _that_ tall, but she did slide into it the moment she crossed the finish line and found him waiting amidst her team on the sidelines. Not even bothering to take off her skis, or to even take a moment to catch her breath and let her muscles to relax from the race, she had gone straight for him.

His arms around her, bony but secure, and the world around them roaring with life, she felt like she had never lived before.

Strange, how needing someone in her life wasn’t as terrible as she had thought it to be. How bad it had once been.

“Don’t drool on me,” Lukas muttered into her ear, like the paragon of social mastery he _truly_ was. He was lucky she didn’t have the strength to smack him for that.

“It’s you people who drool into the snow post-race, not us women,” she mumbled into his shoulder, sagging against him as exhaustion caught up with her and adrenaline left finally. Her win wasn’t confirmed yet, but one look at the results screen had suggested she had a good lead so far – and Erzsébet had already crossed the finish line before Natallia had come, but with a slower time. She was third, barely clutching onto a medal.

And Natallia, she was on the top spot with about fifty skiers still on the track. It might have sounded a lot to some, but there was no one among those fifty that looked like a threat.

But aside from that, aside from the gold medal, she had Lukas here with his fingers in her tightly braided hair. And not only that—there were others, the ones that helped along the way. She could hear Francis, off in the distance, and didn’t his competition start a bit later? Shouldn’t he be preparing for it?

Oh, that wasn’t until the next day, Natallia remembered.

Lukas muttered something too quiet for her to catch over the audience’s cheers for the host nation’s athletes.

“What was that?” She pulled herself up, her arms still draped around his shoulders. His face looked flushed, a visible red high on his cheeks. It looked kind of dumb against his deadpan expression. “What?”

Somewhere, Feliks yelled, “ _Just do it, you coward_!”

 

“He has no tact, does he?” Lukas grunted so quietly Natallia could barely hear it, but when she did, she nodded and grimaced. If Feliks was involved…

“Will you marry me?” Lukas dropped the question like he was asking her if she wanted pancakes for breakfast. It was typical, but it still caught her off guard as he hadn’t bothered to kneel or go on any grand speeches or—

Life really wasn’t anything like those soap operas she had been killing time with.

She squeezed him closer, giving him a peck on the lips. A cruel, fleeting hope, before crushing his hopes. “No, I—not right now.”

The stuttered response didn’t bring any change to Lukas’s demeanor as he let go of her so that she could put on a proper jacket. “What is it?”

“I just… need to _win_ something first,” she said, struggling with her English for the faintest moment. Inwardly, she cringed; not the best choice of words, Natallia.

“You’re literally winning gold at the world championships,” Lukas snorted, but his eyes flashed with understanding as he took her hand and gave it a squeeze. “I guess that’s not what you mean, though.”

She was not about to say it was herself she needed to overcome so that she could settle for happiness, no. It had sounded crazy coming from Feliks, and would not sound any less crazy from her own mouth.

“That’s for you to figure out,” she said.

It wouldn’t take forever, she thought as she pulled away from him to finally take off the skis.

From the audience, a Belarusian flag was thrown down at her, folded into a neat square that she undid with ease. Lukas let go of her hand so that she could drape it over her shoulders and pose for the cameras.

She thought she could hear Feliks crying in the audience as she walked off with her skis and her country’s flag and her _pride_.

Natallia smiled, then, a wide genuine smile that hurt her face.

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to my beta reader, [pygmalionart](https://pygmalionart.tumblr.com/) on Tumblr! I couldn't have done this without you - and it's thanks to her you readers got a decent fic to read instead of the grammatically incoherent mess that this used to be. Also, you know, some really stupid stuff was taken out, so you were saved from that too. She's your saviour, really. My beautiful Poland. ;) The fic might have gone through only the first round of beta'ing at this point, but I still adore the effort she put into this with me. On a similar note, the title may change later because I never gave thought to a proper title. 
> 
> I might add here some notes about the sport if anyone's curious enough, but there aren't any conscious references to athletes and such in the fic. 
> 
> I'd also like to throw in a thank you for the artists that picked this up and also apologize for not being... very communicative through the process. It must've been hard for you guys.


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